new Cbouabts 



on 



Old Doctrines 

Ol. loftn murray 





Class B)(WH 
RnoTc - M? 
Copyright N?_ 



COWRIGHT BEP08CC 



New Thoughts on 
Old Doctrines 



BY 

W. JOHN MURRAY 

AUTHOR OF "ASTOR LECTURES," "THE SANITY 
OF OPTIMISM," ETC. 



THE DIVINE SCIENCE PUBLISHING 
: : : ASSOCIATION : : : 
113 WEST EIGHTY-SEVENTH STREET, NEW YORK 



"To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye 
compare unto him? 

"Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as 
thyself, but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before 
thine eyes. 

"Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I 
unto you. 

"For though there be many that are called gods, whether 
in heaven or earth ... to us there is but one true God, 
the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him. 

"The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the 
Father, he hath declared him. 

"O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but 
I have known thee. 

"Exalt ye the Lord our God, for he is holy. 

"God is Love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in 
God. 

"A Lord of truth and without iniquity. 

"He is thy Life and the length of thy days. 

"It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my 
way perfect. 

"In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the 
breath of all mankind. 

"Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the 
glory, and the victory and the majesty . . . Thou reignest 
over all." 

Transferred from 

- 

V 

Copyright, 1913, by W. Join Mnrr*? 



MAR 2 ! ; 1924 






CONTENTS 

PAGB 

The Changeless Reality 3 

Self-Discovery 33 

Love t 58 

Prayer In Divine Science 65 

The Atonement 97 

Life 129 

God, The Banker > . . . 161 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 

"Every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, 
and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom 
is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." — Jakes 
1:17. 

When Jesus said, "O righteous Father, 
the world hath not known thee, but I have 
known thee," he set forth in very few words 
the great ignorance of the race concerning 
the most essential thing in the universe, 
which is "To know God aright," for this is <_- 
Life eternal. 

Divine Science has come to emphasise the 
fact that in order to know God aright we 
must study, and meditate upon the essential 
Characteristics of deity. It is very evident 
that we have not known God aright, because 
we have not only not entered into Life eter- 
nal, but we have not enjoyed the peace and 
poise and power and prosperity to which we 
are told the "sons and daughters of God" 
are so richly entitled. 

[3] 



/ 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



"O heavenly Father, the world hath not 
known thee, but I have known thee!" Could 
it be that all who had gone before Jesus, and 
all who were living contemporaneously with 
Jesus, were so densely ignorant of the true 
character of God? 

Is it not true that long before Jesus came, 
God was a household word all over the 
world ? True, there were those called pagans 
who believed in many gods. Let us exam- 
ine some of the beliefs about God. At best 
all the race has had are its peculiar concepts 
of Deity. No man hath known God at any 
time and continued to live as a mortal, and 
knowledge of God in the fullest sense of 
the word seems to be quite impossible. But 
this does not deter us from the incumbent 
necessity of investigating for ourselves what 
God must be in his essential characteristics. 

When Abraham came out upon the great 
scene of spiritual action, he came out from 
a people who believed in many gods. His 
father, the Talmud tells us, was a manufac- 
turer of gods. We say, "Imagine it! A 
maker of gods!" And we think that we 

[4] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



are so far removed from that phase of igno- 
rance that we are not makers of idols, but if 
we examine the question scientifically, we 
find that we are just what the pagans were, 
— makers, manufacturers of gods. 

In other words, your concept of God is 
not mine, and my concept of God is not the 
orthodox Christian's concept of God, and 
the orthodox Christian's concept of God is 
not the Hebrew's concept of God at all. 
And so in reality we are makers of gods. 
Perhaps not of tin, of wood and of stone and 
golden gods, but gods nevertheless. He was 
a wise man and a great wit who said that 
"Ever since God had created man in his own 
image and after his own likeness, man had 
been striving to return the compliment." 

In the infancy of the race, in the attempt 
to return the compliment, men made God 
after their own image and likeness. They 
were brutal, carnal, material, and so they 
had a brutal and a carnal and a material 
God, If they wished to sweep a personal 
enemy out of the way, and had sufficient 
physical force, power, and strength to do it, 

[5] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



■I 



they did so, and so they measured the power 
of God by their puny, finite power, and said, 
"If we can remove one enemy out of the way, 
God can sweep an entire nation out of ex- 
istence," hence the cry, "O Lord God of 
Israel, destroy thine enemies from before 
thy face." Men had the idea that His ene- 
mies were their enemies, — or rather that 
their enemies were His. So they cried out to 
this personal God that He might destroy 
His enemies from before His face, when as a 
matter of fact they were men's enemies only, (1 
and enemies only in belief. 

Thus men have begotten in the infancy of 
the race a personal God, the Hebrew Je- 




S S^ "! hovah, a mighty potentate, a selfish, avari- 
V cious, cruel, malicious, wrathful and jealous 
God, and also a personal devil. In our in- 
JL \ fancy we had two persons, a personal God 
and a personal devil, and then we grew up 
into our youth where we began to change 
our views concerning God. We rose above 
the idea of personality connected with Cod, 
and substituted for a personal God and a 
personal devil, two great principles, — the 

[6] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



principle of good and the principle of evil. 
We felt that we had made some strides in 
our education. We rather smiled at the man 
who thought of God in terms of personality, 
and rather ridiculed those theologies which 
emphasised a personal devil with horns, 
hoofs and tail; we felt that we had grown 
tremendously. We could listen no longer to 
the doctrine of a personal God and a per- 
sonal devil. 

Next we come to the approaching man- 
hood of the race, where Divine Science brings 
to our consciousness the great mathematical 
fact that principle in order to be principle 
at all, can only be one. There cannot be two 
principles forever warring with each other. 
Thus in Divine Science to speak of God as 
Principle, a cold, abstract, mathematical 
term to apply to this warm and pulsating 
Presence which we had been taught to speak 
of as God in the past. Here we incurred the 
hostility and the antagonism of those who 
saw this divine Principle as a mere speck 
upon the great ocean of humanity, as a 
something that had come to torment but not 

[T] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



to educate them, and out of this came a 
great many discussions and dissertations. 

I remember a very noted clergyman who, 
when he found that certain members of his 
flock, having exhausted the systems of ma- 
teria medica, and having exhausted the 
power of their own prayers and their pastors 
also, began to turn to Divine Science for 
healing and for health. When the pastor dis- 
covered this departure from his pews of the 
most thoughtful people in his church, then 
discovered that it was only a question of 
time when the church would not be able to 
support itself, and he felt that he must pro- 
tect his church against this emigration of 
his best people, he set himself the task of 
presenting to his congregation the subject 
of divine Principle in all the hideousness 
and ugliness of a distorted imagination. 

I remember very distinctly one of this 
man's most telling points. He said, "These 
Divine Principle people have destroyed 
God. They have reduced God to a princi- 
ple. 'They have taken away the Lord and 
we know not where they have laid him.' 

[8] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



They are a godless people. They have re- 
duced prayer to bold, brazen affirmations. 
They consider themselves equal with God. 
Not only are they unscientific, but they are 
not Christian, and I warn you against iden- 
tifying yourselves with them." 

This was some years ago. Happily the 
pulpit is becoming more tolerant with the 
idea that Divine Scientists "have reduced 
God to a principle." 

But Divine Science has not reduced God 
to anything, and it cannot reduce God be- 
cause it proposes to do the very opposite to 
that. The purpose of Divine Science is to 
magnify the Lord, and if we do anything 
with the Lord, it is that we exalt him. We 
exalt God to the Principle of all principles, 
to the whole. This is not a reduction, but 
an exaltation of God. 

But we must know what we mean when 
we use the word principle, and if our clerical 
friend had taken the time and the pains to 
do what so very few intelligent men ever 
do, — because they assume that they know 
the meaning of all words that they use, — if 

[9] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



he had taken the time and the trouble to 
look up in the dictionary the term principle, 
he would have seen that it is one of the very; 
finest synonyms that one can use for God. 

What does principle mean? I have 
with me the definition of the word "princi- 
ple" as it occurs in the Standard Dictionary 
so that you will know that I am not giving 
you my own definition: 

Principle, "a source or cause from which 
a thing proceeds, a power that acts continu- 
ously or uniformly; a permanent or funda- 
mental cause that naturally or necessarily 
produces certain results on all occasions." 

This is the definition of principle as it oc- 
curs in your Standard Dictionary. "A 
source from which things proceed, a cause, 
a changeless reality." Can you give a more 
comprehensive title to God than this? The 
Only Source, the Only Cause, the Only fun- 
damental Reality! The one great all-con- 
trolling omnipresent Principle of Being. 

If we were Hebrews, we would say, "The 
God of the Universe." If we were orthodox 
Christians, we would say, "The Father of 

[10] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



all mankind." But because we are striving 
to be philosophical Christians, and Christian 
philosophers, we say the Principle of Being. 

At first, of course, it is cold and abstract 
because it was not a term that was used in 
our older order of religious teaching, but 
when it is scientifically explained, I am sure 
that you will agree that no better phrase can 
be used for the God of the universe, or Fa- 
ther of all mankind, than the Principle of 
Being. 

We have said that there are not two prin- 
ciples in the universe, a principle of good 
and a principle of evil. If Principle exists 
at all, it must be One, and this Principle can- 
not be dual in its operations. That is, it can 
not be good on one side of its being and evil 
on the other. 

Only a few days ago I read a prayer by 
one of the most intelligent men we have in 
this country, a devotee of universal peace. 
He was talking to God as he might talk to an 
ordinary man. He said, "Oh, Lord God, we 
ask thee in all thy clemency and tenderness 
and affection to intercede with these conflict- 

en] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



ing nations to bring peace instead of war ; to 
change the hearts of men so that love will 
take the place of hate and anger and mal- 
ice." 

He went on with this marvellous prayer, 
— a very good prayer under the old thought, 
but not at all consistent with our text from 
James the Apostle. James says that God is 
not a variable God, and that with him there 
"is no variableness neither shadow of turn- 
ing." God is "the same yesterday, to-day 
and forever." 

We are asking God to do for the nations 
what the nations alone can do for them- 
selves. Is it rash to say that God cannot 
prevent man from committing a sin if he is 
bent upon committing it? 

It is a necessity of the old theological dog- 
ma, that man is a free moral agent, that God, 
in bestowing upon man the distinguishing 
characteristics of mind, bestowed upon him, 
free moral agency. He gave to him will and 
domination and then left it to man to exer- 
cise these according to his own judgment, 
discretion and wisdom, or lack of it. 

[12] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



And so man in the exercise of these God- 
given faculties, wherever he is cooperating 
with divine Principle, is living in love and 
health and harmony, and not in pain, sick- 
ness, disease and death ; and wherever he has 
worked in opposition to the rules growing 
out of divine Principle, he has sown the 
seeds of unhappiness, misery, ill health and 
death itself. 

Therefore the responsibility rests largely, 
— may I say altogether and exclusively with 
man? 

There was a time when we felt that we 
could sin up to the very last minute, and 
then by our tearful petitions and aided by 
the accumulated prayers of our friends, we 
might ask God to remit the penalty due to 
our sins. Death-bed repentance we called it- 
Some of us had very little faith in it. 

The only destruction of sin there can be 
is not so much the remission of the penalty 
due to it according to Law, as it is in the ref- 
ormation of the sinner himself. There is a 
law back of sin. You cannot sin without 
suffering, and we cannot sin up to the last 

[13] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



moment, and then ask God to push us un- 
ceremoniously into the arms of Abraham. 
It is not consistent with law. It is not con- 
sistent with love, not even the love of God 
itself. 

When we speak of God as Principle, 
while at first it grates harshly upon the ear, 
we see presently that it is far more loving 
than our old concept of God. Sometimes we 
are asked, "How can I pray to a Princi- 
ple?" I think that this is one of the com- 
monest questions that is asked of the student 
of Divine Science. How can I pray to a 
Principle? It seems almost impossible to 
pray to a Principle. 

In music, in mathematics, you don't pray 
to the principle of these, do you? How do 
you acquire musical knowledge, how do you 
acquire mathematical proficiency? 

Is it not by conforming to the principle, 
by understanding its rules and working ac- 
cording to them, that you solve your prob- 
lems in music and in mathematics? It is 
identically the same in metaphysics, — iden- 
tically the same in true religion. For it is 

[14] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



only as we understand the Principle of Be- 
ing, acquaint ourselves intelligently with its 
rules, that we can do what Paul the Apostle 
said we must do — "work out our own salva- 
tion," not with fear and trembling, but with 
love and courage. 

It is only as we become intelligently ac- 
quainted with God as the Principle of the 
universe, that we can acquaint ourselves 
with these rules that naturally grow out of 
the Principle, and then begin to solve our 
own problems. Because I take it, that this is 
the work of every man in the world. He is 
not to have God solve his problems for him, 
but is to solve his own problems according 
to the Principle. 

Is the principle of mathematics less loving 
because it places its whole self, its undivided 
self, as a servant of the child who is study- 
ing arithmetic, or at the service of the ac- 
countant who is working out some great 
mathematical problem, or of the engineer 
who is doing some very delicate work ac- 
cording to its rules? Is the principle of 
mathematics less loving, less generous and 

[15] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



of less usefulness because it permits the stu- 
dent of it to solve his problems on any plane 
of mathematical experience with infallible 
exactitude? Certainly not. 

Is the Principle of Being, which men call 
God, less loving because it enables man 
everywhere and anywhere to work out his 
own salvation according to its rules? Is it 
less loving because it is not a personal God 
and more or less capricious? 

Let us consider the difference between the 
old thought God as person, and the New 
Thought God as Principle. The old 
thought of God as person, leads us into this 
peculiar belief, that if it were the will of 
God and we pray with sufficient intensity 
and earnestness, certain discomforts, dis- 
eases, depressions and discouragements 
might be taken away out of our lives. We 
talked to God as if he were a person situated 
somewhere in a far-off realm, surveying the 
world as the monarch of all he had created, 
and then we asked him to remove some ter- 
rible calamity from our lives, and, if we were 
very good, sometimes, — almost invariably, 

[16] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



we ended our prayer with, "if it be thy will, 
Oh, God." 

It were presumptuous to ask him to do 
it if it were not his will, so we finished our 
prayer with that petition, "if it be thy will, 
Oh, God." 

And I submit it to you to analyse your 
own experiences, and to ask yourself how 
many times when you have prayed that 
prayer with all the earnestness of your soul, 
with all the intensity of your desire to be 
freed from something inimical to your inter- 
ests or health, — I ask you how many times 
you believed that your prayers to a personal 
God were really answered? 

How often have you consoled yourself 
with the belief that perhaps it were not best 
for you to have good health, perhaps it were 
not best for vou to be freed from the clank- 
ing chains of poverty, perhaps it were not 
best for you to live at all, — and so you have 
tried to reconcile your condition with this 
concept of God. 

Over here another man without any 
prayer at all is perfectly well, perfectly 

[17] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



healthy, perfectly strong and prosperous, 
while here you pray and petition, and beg 
and whine almost, to God and yet you go on 
in the same old way ! I ask if you have had 
very many answers to prayers along these 
lines. 

Then is it so wrong, so unchristian to sub- 
stitute divine Principle for a personal God, 
if by understanding this divine Principle, 
we can solve our own problems? Does this 
mean that we should cease praying alto- 
gether? Oh no, no, not at all. It merely 
means that we change the character of our 
prayer. 

The prayers of Jesus were not the prayers 
of John the Baptist. The prayers of Jesus 
were so wholly unlike anything that had ever 
gone up before his time, that we wonder 
what mysterious power there was in them, 
because they always bore results. Did he 
stand at the tomb of Lazarus and pray si- 
lently, and call for Lazarus to come forth? 
Lazarus came forth. But before he came 
forth Jesus said to those who stood by, "The 
Father hath heard me," and he addressed his 

[18] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



heavenly Father and said, "I thank thee, 
Father, that thou hast heard me, for I know- 
that thou hearest me always." 

Why was Jesus so sure, why was he so 
confident that God heard him always ? Why 
is the expert mathematician so sure, so con- 
fident of the principle of mathematics, that 
it will support him whenever he cooperates 
with its rules? Because he has tried it. He 
has tested it. He knows it is unerring. He 
never thinks of accusing the principle of 
mathematics for any error that he may make 
personally. It never occurs to him to trace 
the errors on his ledger to the principle of 
mathematics. To him it is the most uner- 
ring thing in the world. And so it was with 
Jesus ; it never occurred to him to trace the 
death of Lazarus to God. Other men might 
have thought that it was the will of God, 
and that for some wise and inscrutable pur- 
pose of his own God had taken this wonder- 
ful youth from these two marvellous women, 
his sisters. Men might think that, but not so 
with Jesus. 

The one fixed idea in the mind of Jesus 

[19] 



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was simply this. It is not the will of my 
Father that any one should die, but rather 
that he should be converted. Ever and al- 
ways before the mind of Jesus was a great 
fixed fact, and that fact was based upon the 
immutable Principle, the Principle of Life 
itself. Jesus understood the definition of 
principle. He understood it to mean "cause, 
source, origin, that from which things pro- 
ceed," and he also understood it to mean 
that it was without "variableness" or 
"shadow of turning." In other words, that 
it was the same "yesterday, to-day, and for- 
ever," and because it was the Life Principle, 
it had no death thought in it. Because it was 
the Life Principle it only recognised things 
like Itself. If men departed from Principle 
and followed the bent of their imaginations 
and reaped the consequences for so doing, 
that could never be traced to God. 

So Jesus interpreted the will of God ac- 
cording to divine Principle, and not accord- 
ing to the Jehovistic idea of God. It never 
occurred to Jesus that God could cause vic- 
tory to perch upon the banner of one army 

[20] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



over against the contending army. And yet 
within your recollection and within mine, we 
have seen armies separated only by a very 
narrow river, in the dusk of evening when 
firing had ceased, whose chaplains knelt in 
prayer asking God that he might vouch- 
safe victory to their respective armies. 
Could God answer both? Impossible! That 
is always the trouble with going to a per- 
sonal God. 

Indeed, when we think of a personal God, 
we think" of a capricious, vacillating Deity, 
who for some reason of his own, is going to 
confer a blessing upon one and a curse upon 
another. 

During the Civil War this happened with 
us, but it happens anywhere where men have 
this idea of God. One man prays for rain, 
another for sunshine. Surely a personal 
God can not answer affirmatively both of 
these prayers, because they are so diamet- 
ricalty opposed the one to the other. 

Do we not see that we have had a very 
feeble, — dare I say foolish concept of God? 
Have we not as the wit said, been striving 

[21] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



from the beginning of all time to return the 
compliment, and to make God in our own 
image and likeness? 

And what are we as we understand our- 
selves? Vacillating, changeable, now lov- 
ing, now hating, never the same from one 
day to another. Now protesting our undy- 
ing devotion, and to-morrow as jealous as 
can be, changing with every moment of time. 
What difference does it make if we have 
many gods, or one God of many moods? 
None at all. 

In order to have one God scientifically, 
we must have divine Principle which knows 
no change, which sendeth no evil into the ex- 
perience of man, which does not send sick- 
ness, nor poverty, pain nor perplexity; 
which is always the same, sending forth the 
qualities of its own nature. 

That is why Jesus used the sun as the 
simile or symbol of God. It causes its rays 
to fall upon the just and the unjust alike. 
It glints into the hospital cot, into the prison 
cell, into the palace, into the hovel, — any- 
where where men will permit it, there it radi- 

[22] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



ates for us. So it is with the great universal 
Principle, which is God, — there is no place 
where it is not. All we have to do is to lift 
the shade. The Esquimaux can work ac- 
cording to it, the Frenchman, the Italian, 
the Swede, — all can work with it as with the 
principle of mathematics. 

And one of the great beauties about it is 
that we cannot exhaust it. Every one can 
be using this Principle, solving his own par- 
ticular problems with it, without exhausting 
it. 

Is it then reducing God to a principle? 
Is it a reduction of God at all? Is it not 
rather an exaltation of God that makes Him 
immeasurable, omnipotent, omnipresent? 

These are questions we must submit to our 
sane thought. Divine Scientists are intelli- 
gent. If they were not intelligent, they 
could not be Divine Scientists. There is 
some difference between them and other fol- 
lowers. In other churches we may accept, 
but in this we cannot unless we investigate 
thoughtfully and prayerfully the very se- 
crets of being itself. It requires intelligence 

[23] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



to do that. Non-intelligent men may be 
healed by it, but to be a Divine Scientist it 
requires intelligence to understand it, and 
we can never understand it until we realise 
that God is Principle, and that in calling 
God Principle, we have not reduced God in 
the slightest degree. On the contrary w r e 
have done just what the Psalmist said, — we 
have "magnified the Lord." 

What does the word "magnify" mean? I 
used to think in my old religious belief, that 
to magnify the Lord meant to praise God. 
The word "magnify" does not mean praise 
at all. 

Again we are forced to look it up in our 
dictionary, because as I said before, we use 
so many words without realising what they 
actually mean. We take it for granted that 
we know because they are in such common 
use, and as we use them every day, we con- 
clude naturally that we understand them. 
If a man should say to you, "Do you know 
what 'magnify the Lord' means?" you 
would say, "Certainly, of course, Praise the 
Lord." "Magnify" means, to make big. 

[24] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



In Divine Science we understand this re- 
quirement of the Psalmist, "magnify the 
Lord," to mean that you should make God, 
this Divine Principle, so big that there is no 
room in the universe for anything but God, 
and so evil is non-existent; no matter 
how real it seems to be. We treat evil 
just as we treat errors in mathematics. Not 
as realities but as departures from principle, 
as the mistakes that men make in trying to 
solve the problems of life. We never think 
of attributing them to God. It never occurs 
to us. 

Outside of Divine Science, every evil and 
catastrophe we can explain in no other way, 
we say, "It is God's will," don't we? Of 
course we do. Divine Science is the great 
enlightener. It has come to rub the sand 
from our eyes and to pull back the curtain 
and reveal this great Principle, and in the 
light of these truths we are to save ourselves. 

Because, after all, that is what we are 
called upon to do. It sounds like a harsh 
statement to say that God will never save us. 
It is a sweeter statement to say that God has 

[25] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



always saved us. For in the mind of God 
man does not need saving, for there we are 
as perfect as on the day he brought us into 
being. All this seeming imperfection has 
grown around us, and is nothing more nor 
less than the incrustation of error that we 
have indulged in, that we have believed in as 
Truth, and now comes the law of God to us 
and looses us and sets us free. 

Sometimes I think the ordinary man, — 
and I am an ordinary man, — is very much 
like a hyena in a cage, the door of which he 
thinks is locked, and he is walking up and 
down behind it with ceaseless regularity, de- 
siring to get out, but believing he is locked 
in. That is just where we are, we desire to 
get out of our sins, inclinations and sorrows, 
and believing we are locked in, we have to 
remain where we are. Then science comes 
and says, "You are not locked in at all. The 
way of egress is open to you. Put your 
hand upon the gate and pull it towards you, 
and walk out into the freedom of God." 
Realise your oneness with the infinite Wis- 
dom. Affirm it. Do not ask God to do 

[26] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



something for you that you can do for your- 
self. Do not petition God to save you when 
He has already placed within you the poten- 
tialities of your own salvation. God won't 
do it for us. God has done all he can for us. 
He has given to us power and light and in- 
telligence to do the thing ourselves. 

Can we ask more of God than this? He 
has given to us the very life of His life, the 
light of His light, the wisdom of His wis- 
dom, the intelligence of His intelligence. 
What more can we ask? Unless it be a 
mythical heaven, — which we do not want. 

What we want is to know that God is 
here, that the kingdom of heaven is within 
us. That is what Divine Science has come 
to reveal to us ; and if it has given to us the 
Principle of Being instead of the God of the 
Hebrews, or the Father of all humankind, — 
if it has given to us the Principle of Being 
that is within us and only awaiting our own 
expansion and utilisation, then I ask you 
if it has not given to us all, all ! 

It has not robbed us of a single thing ex- 
cept the things we do not need and do not 

[27] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



require, — fear, discontent, ignorance. Our 
ignorances we are perfectly willing to be 
shorn of. Our ignorances are only like 
Samson's locks, the signs of foolish, physical 
strength. They do not mean anything. 
What have they ever done for us except to 
plunge us into misery, unhappiness and dis- 
ease and death itself? 

Then, again, let us think of the nearness 
of this Principle. It is in us now. When 
we thought of God as a personal God, was 
it not always a distant personage? Was it 
ever as near as hands and feet, as a poet has 
expressed it? Whenever you thought of 
God was it not of a far-away heaven? When 
you raised your hands before you in prayer, 
was it not a symbol that you were afar off, 
and that you felt God was far away? You 
do not have to look off into the distance to 
find the Principle of Life. It is within. 
We turn the gaze inward and find the Prin- 
ciple of Life there at work, and if it is not 
there at work, then we are dead indeed. If 
the Principle of Life is not at the very cen- 
tre and heart and core of your being, where 

[28] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



is it? Is it some hidden, concealed, mystic 
energy that is working within you ? That is 
what we believe in Divine Science. 

It is not a something that is working or 
operating upon us, or outside of us, but 
something that is welling up within us like 
a well-spring of life. That is what Jesus 
meant when he told the Samaritan woman 
what he was and said, "If thou hadst asked 
me for the water of life, I would have given 
it to thee, and if thou hadst drunk of the 
water, thou wouldst never have thirsted 
again." 

We know that "the water of life" that we 
draw with a bucket has to be continually re- 
plenished, but this "water of life" that Jesus 
spoke of is the understanding of God, it is 
constant communion with the invisible Force 
within us. 

The Principle of Being, — I like the 
phrase — philosophical, mathematical, ab- 
stract, cold, pulseless, inanimate to the un- 
thinking — a veritable flood of Life to those 
who grasp its real meaning — a great work- 
ing Principle, a something that we cannot 

[29] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



be separated from a single moment and live. 
It is very God of very God. 

Then have we, I ask you in closing, have 
we reduced God ? Simply because we speak 
of God as Principle, does this reduce God? 
Does it not rather magnify God? Does it 
not rather exalt him above the plane of all 
personality, and make him the great uni- 
versal Reality, which is neither he, nor she, 
but It? 

You cannot speak of God as he or she 
unless you speak of It as He and She both, 
the masculine and feminine Principle of the 
universe. Combining the courage, the 
strength, the power, the mastery and domi- 
nation of the masculine with the love, the 
tenderness, the sympathy and the compas- 
sion of the feminine in One, the one universal 
Principle, sexless, neither he nor she, but It, 
is perceived as the one Father-Mother God. 

The Principle of Being is nearer to us 
than that personal God we believed in yes- 
terday; the Principle of Being is that in- 
visible Force that is working within us for 
richness of life, for health, for strength, for 

[30] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



peace, for power. We can no more be sep- 
arated from it than a smile can be separated 
from a face and left out in space, or a sun- 
beam can be separated from the sun and left 
standing as a solitary entity! It can no 
more be done. 

Man is ever one with the Principle of Be- 
ing, God is ever with us as we sit at home 
or walk abroad, yea verily, "In him we live 
and move and have our being." 

Now we can understand why it is nearer 
than our hands or our feet, — because it is 
the very thing by which we live. It is the 
very thing by which we move. It is the very 
thing by which we breathe. Separation from 
God is impossible. 

Take with you, I beg of you, this thought, 
and if it seems cold to you, and if it seems 
abstract and harsh to you, think over it so- 
berly, carefully, and then compare it with 
your personal God. And remember that 
Divine Science does not repudiate, does not 
belittle Deity. 

If it repudiates a capricious, a wrathful, 
and a jealous God, it does not repudiate 

[31] 



THE CHANGELESS REALITY 



God, it merely repudiates these attributes, 
these qualities, as not having anything to do 
with Deity ; and it gives back to us the Prin- 
ciple of Life and Love and the Principle of 
Success. 



E 82] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



"Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed 
upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: there- 
fore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. 

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not 
yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he 
shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall know him 
as he is. 

"We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but 
he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked 
one toucheth him not. 

"And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath 
given us an understanding, that we may know him that is 
true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus 
Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. 

"Him that overcometh will make a pillar in the temple of 
my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon 
him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my 
God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of 
heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new 
name." 



SELF-DISCOVERY 

"After that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and 
ye in me and I in you." — St. John 14 : 20. 

In the world of scientific discovery, there is 
nothing that is quite so important as the 
discovery of self. We are very much con- 
cerned about discovering new continents, 
new planets and North and South Poles; 
rarely ever do we bestow a thought upon 
the greatest of all these discoveries, which 
is the discovery of that which constitutes the 
reality of man. 

We seem to have innumerable selves. In 
fact, modern psychology speaks of multiple 
personalities. Every man seems to be a 
duality of selves at least. In some instances, 
as in the instance of Sarah Beauchamp, we 
have what we call a trinity of personalities, 
but there is in all of us a veritable gallery of 
personalities. Sometimes I am reminded of 

[35] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



this when I look in shop windows and see a 
photograph of the same individual taken evi- 
dently at the same time in various positions. 
One looks at us directly, another casts a side- 
long glance at us and another has its back 
quite turned to us. This is one of the tricks 
of modern photography. We see seated at a 
table the same individual, but it looks like a 
veritable host of individuals. And so it is 
with this strange thing that we call the hu- 
man self, a peculiar mixture of moods, emo- 
tions, temperaments, sensations. We speak 
of ourselves as being ill one day and well an- 
other. We speak of ourselves as being ca- 
pable of doing almost anything one day, 
and the next day we are quite incapable of 
doing anything at all. Surely these con- 
cepts of self — which is all they are, by the 
way — cannot bear any real relation to the 
self that is. When all of these selves are 
paraded before our mental vision, when we 
sit on the reviewing stand of divine Intel- 
ligence and see these varied selves of ours 
that pass in review before us, we are inclined 
to smile because they are so peculiarly un- 

[36] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



like what we want ourselves to be. The self 
of yesterday is not the self of to-day; the 
self of to-day is not the self of to-morrow; 
the self of our childhood, of our adolescence, 
youth and early manhood is a something 
upon which we look back very frequently 
with regret and wish that we might recall a 
great many of the things that the self of 
those days thought and did. The self of 
to-morrow, with its suggestions of old age 
and weakness, is not the self that we like 
to think about. And yet, all of these to- 
gether seem to form the composite photo- 
graph of the real you. 

What is it that sits in judgment upon all 
of these varied and various selves? Is it 
not you, you, your own very self? Are you 
not the reviewing judge, because back of all 
these varied phenomena of the self, there 
you sit calmly enthroned thinking about the 
days of your infancy, youth, middle life, if 
you happen to be getting along in years, or 
perhaps thinking of the time in your middle 
life when you will be that which you desire 
to be, or perhaps dreaming of what you de- 

[37] ' 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



sire to be in old age; all of these selves are 
paraded before you for your own examina- 
tion and review and criticism, if you please. 

Surely the self as knower must be some- 
thing different from the self as known, the 
self as knower must be something different 
from that which the self seems to be, because 
the self which seems to be is little more 
than merely physical, a body, if you please, 
with a mysterious Soul supposedly inside of 
it, but back of all this strange parade of 
your own multiple personalities, there you 
are, the quiet, thoughtful, and I may say, 
dignified spectator of the whole phantasma- 
goria. It is you who are passing judgment 
upon the whole situation. 

And what is this you, for the necessity of 
self -discovery leads up to this giant inquiry 
— What am I? Where am I? Whence 
came I? Whither go I? — these are the 
questions which always perplex the inquir- 
ing soul. They never trouble the stupid 
person. They never trouble the confirmed 
inebriate. Nor do they ever trouble the 
chronic idiot. They are the questions which 

[38] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



are always agitating the soul of him who 
would know, because he is the knower. He 
must know what he is ; not what he has been, 
not what he is going to become, but what he 
is, because this the science of ontology in- 
sists upon. In this it differs from the sci- 
ence of evolution. In this it differs from 
the science of immortality or theology. The 
science of ontology demands that a man 
know not what he has been in a past incar- 
nation, not what he is going to become in a 
future incarnation, but what he really is to- 
day, this moment, now; he must know him- 
self. The oracle of old is just as new as it 
ever was — know thyself. 

What is the most popular concept of self? 
Is it not that of one who apparently comes 
out of nothing into visibility and disappears 
again out of something into invisibility? Is 
it not that of a mortal who dances across the 
stage of human experience, entering by one 
wing and making its exit by another, ap- 
plauded perhaps or hissed, as the case may 
be, according to its successes or its failures, 
approved or condemned according to its 

[39] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



successes or its failures — and this by the self 
as knower? 

It is very evident that if we are to suc- 
ceed in life, that if we are to rise above the 
limitations of sense and time and trouble, 
we must come to a larger and a more com- 
plete understanding of what we are, because 
no man can know his capacities, his capa- 
bilities, until he knows what he himself is. 
And, when he knows what he himself is, 
then begins the slow, gradual ascent above 
what we call personal limitations, because 
when the individual comes into a conscious- 
ness of the reality of himself, then does he 
discover his potential powers, then does he 
realise his unity with that great Self of the 
universe which is God. 

The unity of man with God is not a new 
truth. It may be a new thought to some 
of us to-day, but a new truth — not at all. 
It was emphasised in the Upanishad long 
before the birth of Jesus. It was reem- 
phasised, reiterated and demonstrated, 
which is better, by Jesus. The recognition 
of man's unity with God is the basis of all 

[40] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



success. It is the very foundation-stone of 
all that is great and noble and worth while 
in this world. The stream of consciousness 
upon which floats all the good, bad and in- 
different experiences of the individual is 
not the self, the body is not the self; nay, 
the mind is not the self. The body, which 
has repeatedly changed itself, according to 
physiology, which is not the self that it was 
last year, which is assuredly not the self 
that it was in youth or childhood or before 
birth; the body, which, according to physi- 
ology, has put off every cell of itself during 
the past eleven months, surely this is not the 
self. The evanescent, the ever-moving, the 
ever-appearing and disappearing, surely 
this is not the self. And yet, how many 
people think of it as the self, look upon it as 
the self, regard their state of life and health 
and strength by what they call bodily condi- 
tions, judging themselves by the bodily ap- 
pearances, doing exactly what Jesus said 
man should not do. 

The mind is not the self. Why? Be- 
cause the mind is mutable, the mind is torn 

[41] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



between its varied and various emotions, 
now filled with fear and terror and again 
with courage, and hope, and strength; now 
pure, again impure; now thinking aesthetic, 
spiritual thoughts, to-morrow vulgar and 
unspiritual ones ; at the mercy of every wind 
that blows, whether it be a doctrinal wind or 
a wind of adversity or pleasure. Surely this 
is not the self! 

Self-discovery consists in getting back of 
the body, getting back of the mind which 
forms the body, to the divine Reality, to that 
immutable Center which is always one with 
the great, changeless Self of the world. 
When Jesus said, "I and my Father are 
one," the vulgar people of his day did not 
understand him, because it requires ears to 
hear; that is, it requires spiritual perception 
to take in such a wonderful spiritual truth. 
In like manner, the vulgar of to-day do not 
understand it. The "I" of you is indeed one 
with the Father, because it is that which has 
never known sin, has never known sickness, 
which is the direct consequence of sin ; it has 
never known anything but that which is 

[42] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



true; it is incapable of beholding anything 
but the brightness of its own glory. It is 
like the sun; it sees only that upon which 
its vision rests. It never beholds the shad- 
ows of fear or failure, sin or sickness. It 
is always serene with the serenity of the 
great, universal Self. It is not to be touched, 
as the ancients said, by fire or flood. It is 
that center of man's being which is ever the 
same, like God, yesterday and to-day and 
forever. Until we find ourselves as a spir- 
itual entity, subject neither to birth, growth, 
maturity nor decay, we shall never know 
the self, we shall ever speculate about the 
self and that will appear to be the self which 
is not; we shall be self-conscious, self-con- 
demnatory, self-approving, and all of the 
time that which we condemn and approve 
will not be the self at all, but the shadow 
cast by our wrong thinking ; the Self in real- 
ity remains ever the same. 

The self is never found by looking out- 
side. The self is ever found by entering into 
the great within. It is not enough that we 
quiet bodily emotions, it is not enough that 

[43] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



we subdue bodily twitchings, it is not 
enough that we quiet turbulent thought, 
though these are the necessary steps leading 
to the great valley of silence. The silence is 
not the control of the body nor the control 
of thoughts by mental forces or powers quite 
so much as it is the deep, tranquil, self-con- 
scious communion with God. Out of this 
and through this and by this the mind be- 
comes tranquil and serene and the body re- 
sponds to it in terms of health and joy, glad- 
ness and power. 

Self-discovery is the most essential thing 
in the universe. Of what avail is it that we 
discover new planets, that we find the North 
Pole, of what avail is it that we discover oil, 
precious pearls in the sea and rubies in the 
mines? Of what avail is it that we convince 
ourselves that Mars is inhabited, if we have 
no spiritual sense of self? "For what shall it 
profit a man," said Jesus, "if he shall gain 
the whole world and lose his own soul?" 
Soul means spiritual self. What doth it 
profit a man, indeed, if he acquire all the 
things of earth and all the joys of the ortho- 

[44] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



dox heaven, if he doesn't know himself and 
his capacities and capabilities? Of what 
avail is it? What pleasure would an idiot 
find in heaven? What pleasure would a sick 
man find in the orthodox heaven? All of the 
joy and all the gladness and all the peace 
and power in the universe consists in finding 
one's self. 

And, when the self is found, what do we 
find? We find God, because the discovery 
of self is really the discovery of God. The 
reality of one is the reality of the other, 
and herein lies the explanation of these 
wonderful, mystic words of Jesus, at that 
day, at that day when your eyes are opened 
to the facts of Divine Science, at that day 
when Truth dawns upon your awakened 
consciousness, ve shall know, know bevond 
peradventure, know beyond the shadow of 
a doubt, "that I am in the Father and 
the Father in me," I in you, ye in me and 
we in all. Here is the mystic statement of 
the inseverability of Realities. Here is the 
mystic utterance of one who knew that cause 
and effect and consequence are inseparable 

[45] ' 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



as is the sun and the light and the warmth 
thereof. 

Man cannot exist without God, and may 
I say without being accused of blasphemy, 
that God cannot exist without man? Ef- 
fect cannot exist without cause and neither 
can cause exist without effect. The Father 
cannot exist without the Son; neither can 
the Son exist without the Father. Here is 
the inseparability of God and man and the 
faculties and functions of the individual. 
When this truth concerning the self becomes 
more apparent to human consciousness, we 
shall see how impossible, how utterly and 
absolutely impossible it is for anything to 
injure the self. In moments of temptation, 
it will be the grand safeguard against diffi- 
culties, against pains, against perplexities; 
in moments of temptation, when the tempta- 
tion always comes to believe that self can in 
some wise be injured by some one else, by 
something else, by some event or prospec- 
tive calamity, when the temptation comes to 
believe that the self can become ill, poor and 
die — then arises this wonderful conscious- 

[46] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



ness that says to the individual, the self is 
superior to all, the self is greater than all the 
selves that are paraded before us, because, 
after all, these are nothing more nor less 
than more or less imperfect concepts of what 
the self really is. 

We can conceive of ourselves as hu- 
man beings, mortal, mutable, and, accord- 
ing to our conception, we are, because verily, 
as a man thinketh in his heart so must he be 
in his external manifestations. We can con- 
ceive of ourselves as going through all the 
ramifications of human experience. We 
are born, we go to school, we graduate, we 
go into the great university of hard knocks, 
we suffer all kinds of tribulations and temp- 
tations, and then we marvel about what is 
going to become of us after death. All of 
these are speculations, foolish speculations, 
based upon foolish concepts of what the self 
really is. The old oracle, "Know thyself," 
was not amiss, after all, because to know 
the self does not lessen man's vigorous pur- 
suits of knowledge along other legitimate 
lines. It would not interfere with Peary 

[47] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



going after the North Pole. It would not 
interfere with the legitimate pursuit of 
wealth. It would not interfere with the le- 
gitimate pursuit of pleasure. On the con- 
trary, it would add zest to inquiry. It would 
add to discovery strength and not fatigue. 
Men would pursue all their legitimate in- 
vestigations through the knowledge of what 
the self really is with greater power. We 
should increase not only in heavenly Truth 
but in worldly wisdom that is not illegiti- 
mate. As the soul expands in the di- 
rection of its own reality, the intellect also 
expands as a natural consequence. But how 
many men have developed the intellect at 
the expense of the soul! By the soul, I 
mean the self, the self that is at-one with 
God. If we could always keep before 
us, and may I say we can — I use the 
word if because it has been a habit with 
most of us to feel that we can't always retain 
a spiritual consciousness of ourselves, that 
we must occasionally go down into the 
depths, — we must from time to time be im- 
pressed by one or many of these varied 

[48] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



selves of ours that parade before our vision 
like ghosts of the night. This is not so, how- 
ever, because there is a science, which, like 
all other sciences, requires concentration, 
which will enable the individual to rest sub- 
limely, serenely, comfortably in the thought 
of the reality of self as a spiritual entity. 

Some say this is altogether too idealistic, 
that this philosophy is quite apt to take an 
individual out of the world of common af- 
fairs, that this is quite apt to make a man 
an impractical visionary. My dear friends, 
it doesn't make an automobile less useful be- 
cause you see that the tank is filled with 
gasoline and that the machinery is in good 
running order. It doesn't make machinery 
in a factory less useful because you take ex- 
cellent care of it and govern it from below 
in the engine-house. It ought not to make 
an individual less useful in the world because 
he is able persistently to contemplate his 
reality, his divinity. On the contrary, is it 
not the storehouse of refreshment? Is not 
the great Self understood a reservoir of 
strength and power and majesty and sub- 

[49] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



limity? Is it not to this that you turn in a 
moment of fatigue for refreshment, in a mo- 
ment of sickness for health, in a moment of 
temptation for a power of resistance? Is 
it not to this always that you turn? In 
some mysterious way, we seem to feel, long 
before we come into the larger study of 
things, that all of this that is transpiring 
on the surface is not us. The we of us, 
the us of us, the you of you and the I of 
myself seems to reason about all of these 
experiences, and we sometimes ignorantly 
or instinctively arrive at the conclusion 
that these are no more a true part of 
our being than is the wart upon the hand, 
— an excrescence, a sediment that is gather- 
ing in the water of life, a something that is 
interrupting and interfering with our nat- 
ural progress. But, heretofore, in our ig- 
norance we have come to the belief that this 
was just as natural as the other part of it, 
that sickness is just as natural as health. 
You can't be well always, says one ; and the 
great majority say, "But you must die some- 
time or other." How persistently we have 

[50] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



argued for the necessity of death ! And yet 
Jesus said, "If a man believe on me, he shall 
never taste death." Was he speaking of 
the physical? Ah! there is the thing, you 
see. My dear friends, when you come into 
the larger idea of the self, the physical dis- 
appears; the spiritual is all. When this 
fuller thought of man's individuality, of 
man's true ego dawns upon your conscious- 
ness, the physical disappears just as does 
your old garment, — you no longer think of 
the physical; you live in the spiritual. 

Ah! says one, if you live always in the 
spiritual, the body is quite apt to suffer from 
neglect. For centuries men have bestowed 
the greatest care upon the body, and yet it 
has died, not from neglect but from over- 
care. We have pandered to it. We have 
patted it and comforted it. The flesh prof- 
iteth nothing. The flesh doesn't give life 
to the Spirit. The very reverse, — "the 
spirit that quickeneth" is the deep, under- 
lying conviction of the individual that 
the all of him from center to circum- 
ference is purely spiritual. That is what 

[51] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



makes him immune, which renders him su- 
perior to the elements. He says of himself, 
"I am spiritual through and through; I am 
not physical and subject to physical laws. 
The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus 
hath made me free from the law of sin and 
disease and death." He takes refuge in the 
great truth that his self, his real self is di- 
vine, not mortal; spiritual not material. 

The discovery of the self, then, you see, is 
not the least important discovery in the 
world. Yea, though we discover all the 
planets in the planetary system, though we 
discover all the pearls in the sea and all the 
rubies in the mine and all the oil in the land 
and all of the new continents, and strange, 
mysterious hemispheres, and we do not find 
ourselves, of what avail is it? No wonder 
that Jesus, that simple man who reduced 
all these great complexities of life to simple 
utterances, said, "what shall it profit a man, 
if he gain the whole world," of what advan- 
tage is it; naked we came into it, naked we 
shall go out of it. Why lay so much stress 
on this little song and dance on the vaude- 

[52] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



ville stage of human experiences, coming in 
at one wing and going out at the other? 
Why emphasise it? It isn't all there is of 
being. It isn't all there is of self. It isn't 
anything of being. It isn't anything of self. 
It is the great illusion, and yet it is so real 
to the majority, and because it is so real we 
suffer, we sicken, we die. Because it is so 
real, we minister to what we call the body, 
its passions, its pains — they are all catered 
to, loved and feared. And all of the time 
the self, as Emerson puts it, "lies there 
stretched in smiling repose," watching the 
great procession of things and not paying 
any attention particularly. The self of you 
is mighty and the self of you is in God ; the 
self of God is in you. The self of God and 
you are in your neighbor, and the self of 
your neighbor is in you and in God. There 
is only one, Supreme Self in the universe. It 
can neither sin, suffer nor be sick. It is 
never born, never grows, never matures, 
never dies. It is always the same, and it is 
this which sits in judgment upon that which 
comes into birth, grows, matures and dies. 

[53] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



It is that which sits the silent, observant wit- 
ness of a lot of foolishness. 

What are you? According to one sys- 
tem, you are mud, made of the dust of the 
ground, a soul breathed into your nostril. 
According to another system, you are mind. 
Well, you may take your choice. No man, 
when the question is put squarely up to him, 
wants to be mud. No man, when he thinks 
seriously about himself, wants to think that 
he is confined to a mortal body subject to 
mortal laws. When you present the picture 
of the divine self, which is the only self, to 
an individual and his eyes are opened so that 
he can see what you are showing to him, then 
he says, "This is the idea of self I want. I 
want the self that is forever indissolubly 
connected with God. I want the self that 
never varies. I want the self that realises 
all the beauty and harmony and health and 
peace and joy in the universe. I want the 
self that can never be severed from the In- 
finite." We all do, and Divine Science has 
come to aid us in the discovery of this most 
important thing in the universe. 

[54] 



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When you are tempted to think of your- 
self as being sick, hereafter you are going to 
ask yourself what yourself is, and then you 
are going to ask if that self is divine, the im- 
age and likeness of God, the reflection of 
the One altogether lovely. You are going 
to ask yourself if that self which is the only 
self of you can be sick. When you are 
tempted to sin, you are going to ask yourself 
if that self, the real self, the immortal self 
of you, is subject to sin, and according to 
your answers, so will it be done unto you, 
because the answers will be in accord with 
Truth. The answer will be that you are not 
subject to sin, sickness nor disease. The an- 
swer will be forever and always that as the 
image and likeness of God, you are perpet- 
ually the same, yesterday, to-day and for- 
ever. Neither youth nor old age can affect 
you. Nothing can by any means hurt you, 
and that is what Jesus meant. But, the 
you to Jesus meant an entirely different 
thing from what the you meant to most 
of his hearers. The you to most of them 
meant that which is constantly shedding it- 

[55] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



self, which is constantly giving itself off, 
as the rattler puts off its skin periodically, 
which is constantly sloughing away, which is 
not the same one day physically or emo- 
tionally — that was the idea of the you to 
most of the people. But that was not the 
thought in the mind of Jesus when he said, 
"Nothing shall by any means hurt you." 
He meant you in your entirety, — spirit, 
soul and spiritual body. The you is a 
most important thing. Don't let us forget 
it. Let us spend our days, aye, our nights in 
finding this self of ours, this changeless self 
which ever remains the same, which looks 
out upon the selves as so many parodies of 
itself. Maintain the attitude toward all of 
these personal selves of yours that you 
would maintain to just so many proofs of 
the photograph of yours that the photogra- 
pher sends home to you to-day or to-morrow 
or whenever you have your photograph 
taken. This you accept; that you reject. 
Why? Because you say, "That is not my- 
self at all. It isn't a bit like me." That is 
your divine privilege; it is your human 

[56] 



SELF-DISCOVERY 



privilege. If none of them look like you, 
then you return them all and don't give an 
order. If none of these concepts of your- 
self in your own mental art gallery measure 
up to your idea of self, put them out. If 
the proof that is returned to you from the 
photographer is that of a sickly person, put 
it out and declare, "I myself am well," be- 
cause now you know what the self is. This 
interpretation of the self is neither mystical 
nor mysterious. Neither is it far-fetched. 
It is based upon exact science. It is based 
upon the discovery of what the self really is, 
and when it finds lodgement in human con- 
sciousness, then the individual becomes a 
power, a minister of God in His righteous- 
ness, a self-healer and a healer of other men. 
No longer is he mystified nor misled by the 
things which appear to be, because always 
within, in the center of his soul, there is the 
consciousness of himself as the divine idea. 
This is salvation ; this is health, healing, har- 
mony. 



[57] 



LOVE 

The shortest definition of Love is given 
by John the Disciple, "God is love; and 
He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in 
God." Jesus said, "Greater love hath no 
man than this, that a man lay down his life 
for his friends." John 15 : 13. How do we 
professing Christians apply this saving 
Love? We are not often called upon to 
lay down our lives for our friends, owing 
to the refining influence of the teachings of 
him who did this very thing. How often do 
we lay down the simplest things in life for 
our friends? It was the Samaritan with 
Love in his heart who was neighbor to the 
man. The priest and the Levite had love 
and law on their lips. They laid it down as 
a duty to be performed by others, but they 
themselves "passed by on the other side." 
The Samaritan "laid down his money for 
the care and keep of this bruised and beaten 
stranger. Love is not a something to be 

[58] 



LOVE 

confined to the narrow limitations of one's 
own immediate family and friends. 

Love is universal in its adaptations and it 
is only when we try to limit it to ourselves 
that we suffer. Inverted love is a mental 
stiletto by which we ignorantly and uninten- 
tionally commit mental and physical suicide. 
Love is like the sun in one respect, for it is 
only when it shines out from itself to others 
that it can be said to be performing its true 
function. If the sun could shine in upon 
itself as men become self-centered through 
self love, it would presently become self -ex- 
tinguished. 

The true nature of man is the true nature 
of the sun, both exist for the purpose of ex- 
pressing the highest and the best, but the 
sun never does what man is constantly do- 
ing, it never violates its true nature. 

We often hear it said that, "There is little 
love in the world," and "What the world 
needs is more love." Really there is an 
abundance of love in the world, and the only 
misfortune is that it is not properly directed. 
We love things instead of thoughts, and 

[59] 



LOVE 

power instead of people. We are not lack- 
ing in love quite so much as we are lacking 
in wisdom to exercise it properly. 

We pray for more love when we are not 
giving the fullest expression to the love we 
have. We suffer from suppression. We 
stifle our best and noblest, and permit our 
worst and most ignoble impulses to occupy 
the field of consciousness, and then we won- 
der why we develop physical diseases. We 
do not see the association of anger and apo- 
plexy. We do not seem to realise that hate 
kills the hater, and that we die of the poison 
which our animosities have generated in the 
system, and not realising these facts we can- 
not understand that love is the only and in- 
fallible remedy. We do not need more love 
any more than we need more electricity ; all 
we need is to utilise love more freely. 
When electricity began to be used exten- 
sively, learned professors wrote long articles 
on the possibility of its exhaustion. We 
were told that the commercialisation of this 
marvellous force was devitalising the atmos- 
phere, and that it was only a question of 

[ 60 ] 



LOVE 

time when plant life and animal life would 
feel the awful consequences. Since that 
time it has been used and is now being used 
to assist plant life and to hatch chickens, 
and some go so far as to say that its use 
through mechanical devices will destroy 
wrinkles, restore genuine youth and produce 
longevity. Electricians tell us that this 
marvellous force is inexhaustible, that every 
demand that is made upon it only creates 
a vacuum which this ever-present force has- 
tens to fill. A wise man says: "The love 
we give is the love we keep." 

If we should say the cash we give is the 
cash we keep, we should have some difficulty 
digesting the statement, and yet there are 
those who can testify to the truth of this 
statement also. Jesus said: "Give, and it 
shall be given you; good measure, pressed 
down, shaken together and running over, 
shall men give into your bosoms: for what- 
soever ye mete it shall be meted unto you 
again." This giving, however, must be done 
in the proper spirit if we would receive as 
much again, for back of this is a law as fixed 

[61] 



LOTE 

as the law of the Medes and Persians, which 
rewards not according to gifts but according 
to godliness; not according to acts but ac- 
cording to motives. 

Love in human consciousness serves to 
enrich the soul of the benefactor while 
ministering to the needs of the body of 
the beneficiary. The highest love is that 
wherein it is seen that there is no beneficiary 
but the benefactor. This Truth is seen in 
those words of Jesus, "It is more blessed to 
give than to receive." "Love doth not 
behave itself unseemly." It is kind and 
courteous, gentle, and easy to be entreated. 
It fears not, for "Perfect Love casteth out 
fear." Where Love is, fear cannot be, and 
Love is the omnipresent God, therefore fear 
is a figment of the imagination and the nat- 
ural result of a belief in the presence of 
something apart from God. True love is 
equivalent to true knowledge, or a knowl- 
edge of Truth. It recognises no hate nor 
anger, no lust nor avarice. It sees only the 
brightness of its own character. It is too 
pure to behold iniquity, too chaste to indulge 

[62] 



LOVE 

in unchastity. Love destroys tumors as ef- 
fectually as it dries tears. It rolls away the 
stone from the sepulchre of discourage- 
ment and disease, and the individual who has 
been entombed through and by spiritual ig- 
norance walks forth into "The glorious lib- 
erty of the Sons of God." Have you, as 
student of Divine Metaphysics, been called 
forth, as was Lazarus of old, from the damp 
and darkened chamber of hopelessness and 
helplessness? If so, then arise to your re- 
sponsibilities. Let the grave-clothes fall 
from.vour hands, and eves, and feet and lis- 
ten to the final injunction of Truth, "Loose 
him, and let him go." You must be about 
your Father's business, but you cannot do 
this if you are bound by the grave-clothes of 
your past fears and limitations. The grave- 
clothes of reason must be cast aside, "laid 
down" in the presence of that revelation 
which bids you, "Go ye into all the world 
(of spiritual ignorance about you) and 
preach the Gospel (of the All-ness of God) 
to every creature." These signs shall follow 
you if you believe in this Allness. "In my 

[63] 



LOVE 

^ ■— — — ^— — — i^— — —————— —^-^— ^—— 

name (in the name of omnipotent Love) 
shall they cast out devils (all seeming evil) ; 
they shall speak with new tongues (the 
tongues of the learned in Divine Meta- 
physics ) . They shall take up serpents, and 
if they drink any deadly thing it shall not 
hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick 
and they shall recover." So, then, after the 
greatest expression and expressor of Love 
this world has ever seen had given these 
powers unto men he was received up into 
heaven (the most perfect state of mental 
harmony) and sat on the right hand of God. 
That is to say, he entered into such a glori- 
ous realisation of what Love is as to make 
him invisible to those whose knowledge 
of Love is limited and carnal. As we grow 
in the spirit of Love, manifesting it in the 
healing of the sick and the comforting of the 
sorrowing, we shall grow "unto the meas- 
ure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." 
We shall see Love as Love is, and we shall 
be like It in thought and deed, here and now, 
"And every man that hath this hope in him 
purifleth himself even as he (Love) is pure." 

[ 64 ] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



"What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe ye 
have received them, and ye shall have them. 

"Before they call, I will answer. 

"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giv- 
/" eth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall 
be given him. 

"But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that 
wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind 
and tossed. 

"For let not that man think tha* he shall receive any- 
thing from the Lord. 
/ "If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it. 

"For your Father knoweth what things ye have need of 
before you ask him. 

"The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord 
will raise him up. 

"And if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven 
him. 

"Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer with 
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. 

"The effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous man avail- 
eth much. 

"Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me, and I 
know that thou hearest me always." 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 

"Therefore I say unto you that what things soever ye de- 
sire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and 
ye shall have them." — Mark 11:24. 

James, the Apostle, in his wonderful epistle 
says: "Is any man sick among you, let him 
call in the elders of the church, and the 
prayer of faith shall save the sick." You 
will notice that James says "shall save the 
sick." He does not say may, as we would 
to-day, but he makes a positive statement, 
- — "the prayer of faith shall save the sick." 

History records that for something like 
three hundred years immediately after the 
beginning of the Christian era, prayer was 
accredited a therapeutic value that it never 
had before, and with which it has never been 
credited since. Through ignorance of the 
facts many people feel that all spiritual 
healing by the power of prayer was limited 
to Jesus and his immediate disciples. So 

[67] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



they constantly declare that the age of mira- 
cles is past, meaning by this that healing 
by purely spiritual means, if it ever was 
successfully practised, has become a lost 
art. Or, if they believe the Theologians, de- 
clare that God never intended that spiritual 
healing should go on throughout the ages; 
that it was one of the outward or visible 
manifestations of unseen power intended by 
Jesus to usher in and emphasise the new 
order of things, the new dispensation. This 
being accomplished, healing by prayer was 
no longer necessary. Eminent divines in 
all churches, and we think Christians in 
every denomination, through strange and 
faulty reasoning have arrived at this con- 
clusion: — that spiritual healing was merely 
an impressive method used to make people 
understand the new dispensation, and that 
after this had been accomplished, there 
would be no longer any need for its con- 
tinuance. 

In fact, it seems to me that we sometimes 
imagine Christianity to have been ushered 
in by the use of magic; that in order to 

[68] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



gather an audience, Jesus had to indulge 
in a few spectacular performances. That is 
the idea that many of us have of the healing 
ministry of Jesus. 

It never seems to us that back of every 
healing recorded by the Nazarene, there is 
a law. We seem to feel that in some 
strange and supernatural way this unusual 
Son of God was gifted with a power that 
no other man in human history has ever had, 
to such an extent, at least. 

Divine Science has come to take the very 
marked human instinct to pray, out of the 
external and the occasional and to plant it 
in the soil of beautiful expectancy. We 
speak of the instinct of prayer and of man 
as a praying animal. We seem to differen- 
tiate ourselves from the beasts by this par- 
ticular instinct, the instinct of prayer. We 
say we have it and the animals have it not. 
We share one instinct in common with all 
animal and vegetable life, and that is the 
instinct of self -preservation ; and we feel 
that self-preservation, so far as the human 
being is concerned, is daily dependent 

[69] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



upon prayer and the prayerful attitude of 
man. 

And yet when we look out over the world 
and hear of the innumerable prayers going 
up for health, strength, harmony and sub- 
stance, we are prone to think prayer is too 
infrequently answered. How often have we 
seen an entire nation setting apart a day 
for itself to pray for the life of a beloved 
ruler or president, threatened with death, 
that he might be spared and restored to 
health and strength; and yet he passed on 
like any other man, notwithstanding the fact 
that the accumulated prayers of the nation 
were piled up for his recovery. We in this 
country see this too often. Then over 
against this it does seem as though the bad 
man's bullet is more powerful than the good 
man's prayers. It does seem as if the as- 
sassin has more power to rid the earth of 
a good man than the accumulated prayers 
of all the Christians have to keep him here. 
These questions should give us pause, we 
think. 

Was there ever at any time in the history 

[70] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



of the human mind, a firm belief in the po- 
tency of prayer? Was there ever at any 
time on the part of men a sure confidence 
that their prayers would indeed be heard? 
Why should our prayers be so infrequently 
answered, and why should the prayers of 
Jesus and his immediate disciples have been 
so frequently answered? The question is, 
Did Jesus pray differently? Were the 
prayers of Jesus based upon a different 
premise from our own prayers? 

You remember when John the Baptist's 
disciples came to Jesus. After John had 
been cast into prison, they came to Jesus 
and followed him and watched his so-called 
miracles. One day they said to him, "Mas- 
ter, teach us to pray as John taught his dis- 
ciples to pray." And then he offered up 
that brief and wondrous prayer that has 
evec since been called "The Lord's Prayer." 
A prayer which we unfortunately very 
poorly understand because part of it has 
been very poorly translated. Toward the 
end of the prayer, it reads as if Jesus had 
asked his Heavenly Father not to lead him 

[71] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



into temptation. You remember that it 
reads "Lead us not into temptation, but de- 
liver us from evil." These are the words 
as they appear in the ordinary version. 
They are not so in the original text: they 
are, "Leave us not in temptation, but de- 
liver us from the one evil." There does not 
seem to be very much difference, but on re- 
flection we see that we are not asking God 
"not to lead us into temptation." We are 
simply asking that "we be not left in temp- 
tation." The temptation is not from God; 
the temptation is from other sources, other 
causes, and comes mainly from within our- 
selves. "Leave us not in temptation, but 
deliver us from the one evil." That "one 
evil" became translated into a personal 
devil, and later into an impersonal evil. 
What is this one evil? The one evil is man's 
belief in evil. The evil of believing in a 
power opposed to the omnipotence of God, 
the evil of believing in a personal devil, or 
an impersonal evil. In short, it is the one 
evil of believing anything that is not truth. 
It is the belief in a supposed power press- 

[72] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



ing ever against the actual power and pres- 
ence of Almighty God, and hence we can 
say with Jesus, "Leave us not in tempta- 
tion, but deliver us from the one evil," — de- 
liver us from the temptation to believe that 
there is anything but God. This belief is 
the seed and the root upon which the tree 
that bears such wretched fruit flourishes. 

We see a difference between the prayers 
of Jesus and those of John the Baptist. 
John the Baptist petitions, supplicates. 
Jesus affirms. And it is in this way that we 
wish to speak of prayer, — that is, positive 
affirmation. 

When Jesus stood at the tomb of Laz- 
arus, and the bereaved sisters of Lazarus, 
Martha and Mary, were weeping and be- 
moaning the fact that Jesus had not come 
earlier, feeling confident that had he come 
earlier their brother would have lived, — they 
said, "If thou hadst been here, my brother 
had not died." A n & he turned unto them 
and said, "Said I not unto thee, he that be- 
lieveth in me, though he be dead, yet shall 
he live?" And Martha said, "Yea, I know 

[73] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



that he shall rise again in the resurrection, 
at the last day." It seems to be a peculiar 
tendency of the human mind to postpone 
everything to the resurrection day, the last 
day, the judgment day. And Jesus turned 
to Martha and said, "I am the resurrection 
and the life. He that believeth in me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live." 
And then he said, "Father, I thank thee that 
thou hast heard me, and I know that thou 
hearest me always; but because of the peo- 
ple which stand by, I said it, that they may 
believe that thou hast sent me." I say, 
"Lazarus, come forth." And history re- 
cords that Lazarus came forth bound hand 
and foot, and with the grave clothes about 
his eyes. 

Jesus adopted a method the very reverse 
of that which we adopt. He thanked God 
in advance for his blessings. We would 
have waited to see Lazarus out of the tomb 
and the bandages removed from his ankles 
and his eyes, in order to be convinced that 
truth had manifested itself. Jesus says, 
"Whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray, 

[74] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



believe that ye receive them, and ye shall 
have them." For this text I never 
found any satisfactory explanation in Old 
Thought. When I pray, I am to believe 
that I receive what I desire. Why pray 
then? Why pray if I believe that I have 
already received what I desire? In the Old 
Testament we read, "Before they call I will 
answer; and while they are yet speaking, I 
will hear." These are mystical statements. 
Jesus spoke in parables, and here are the 
parables of Jesus with no convenient Jesus 
to interpret them. But Divine Science is 
penetrating beneath the surface of these 
marvellous words of the Master and discov- 
ering in some degree at least their hidden 
content. In Old Thought we pray for 
blessings to a far-awaj^ God, which bless- 
ings are to be imported to us from a place 
outside of ourselves, a far-away heaven. 
We beseech God to be merciful, tender and 
compassionate, when it is not the nature of 
God to be otherwise. We want God to 
shower blessings on us, to give us health and 
strength and wealth, always believing that 

[75] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



these are to come from outside of ourselves, 
never believing that we have already re- 
ceived them as the soil receives the seed of 
the oak that is to be ; never really under- 
standing that it is within our power to work 
out our own salvation. And when I say 
work out, I mean that our salvation is 
within; otherwise we could not work it out. 
Most of us have tried to work it in, as we 
work in an oil by embrocation. What we 
have to do is to work it out, to feel con- 
scious that within us is the power to over- 
come sin, sickness, poverty, disease and even 
death itself. And so it is that we have gone 
on and on for centuries praying to an ab- 
sentee God to work out our salvation for us. 
In Divine Science we no longer petition, 
we no longer supplicate, but this does not 
mean that we no longer pray. A young 
minister once said of us that we are "a pray- 
erless people ;" because we no longer repeat 
litanies and rosaries, or make genuflections 
or go through the rites and ceremonies the 
older churches teach. We are not a prayer- 
less people, though we are a people who no 

[76] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



longer indulge in formulae. If he knew us 
better he would not say that we are a pray- 
erless people, but rather that we pray with- 
out ceasing, that we are constant in prayer, 
that we are constantly affirming the omnipo- 
tence, omniscience and omnipresence of 
God, for it is the affirmation of man's unity 
with his maker. And I take it that this was 
the prayer of Jesus — the deep and persist- 
ent affirmation of man's unity with God. 

Quite unlike the minister of to-day or 
the rabbi of his day, Jesus rarely knelt in 
prayer. We are somewhat amazed when 
we read the little narrative of the calling 
forth of Lazarus, to discover that there is 
no reference made to any petition whatso- 
ever. It is not said of Jesus that he knelt 
at the tomb of Lazarus and cried out in 
piteous appeal to God that he might be re- 
stored to his sisters, to whom he was so nec- 
essary. It is not said of Jesus that he asked 
those around him to unite with him in 
prayer for the restoration of life to Laz- 
arus. We do not find him crying unto God 
to be merciful and compassionate and ten- 

[77] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



der and to restore this youth to life and 
vigour. Telling Mary, "I am the resurrec- 
tion and the life, he that believeth on me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live again," 
Jesus prays, "Father, I thank thee that thou 
hast heard me," — remember that Lazarus 
was still in the tomb, — "Father, I thank thee 
that thou hast heard me. And I know that 
thou hearest me always, but because of the 
people which stand by I said it, that they 
might believe." Then he said, "Lazarus, 
come forth." And Lazarus came forth. 
Soul answereth to soul, spirit answer- 
eth to spirit, and audible prayer was 
as far removed from the idea of prayer in 
the mind of Jesus, as the North is from the 
West or from the South. We find little 
reference made to audible prayer on the part 
of Jesus. His prayers were those silent 
contemplations of truth, those moments and 
hours of silent realisation of the presence of 
the inworking of the Holy Spirit. The 
prayers of Jesus were too big for words. 
They could never be put into formulae. I 
think that he would never have given out 

[ 78 ] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



what we call "The Lord's Prayer," were 
it not for the fact that his disciples asked 
for a formula, as we to-day ask for a 
formula. 

People come to us every day and ask us 
to give them some thought, some verbal 
statement. Why? Because it seems to be 
the only way by which they can hold on to 
an internal truth; to have an external af- 
firmation for it, an audible repetition of 
the words seems to be the one thing by 
which they can anchor to the thing they most 
desire to bring out. So Jesus gave them this 
simple prayer, "Our Father which art in 
heaven," and we must remember that Jesus 
had told his disciples where heaven is. He 
had told them that the kingdom of heaven 
is within. Now you know that the natural 
tendency of the twentieth century denomi- 
national christian when making that prayer 
is to think of something far away, "Our Fa- 
ther which art in heaven:" rarely if ever 
does he associate in his own mind with this 
remarkable statement the idea of omnipres- 
ence. "Our Father which art in heaven" — 

[79] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



Our Father which art away off, "hallowed 
be thy name; thy kingdom come," and he 
asks that this kingdom come as if it were 
some strange importation from another 
planet. "Thy kingdom come"— thy king- 
dom which is ever resident in the secret 
sanctuary, hidden in every longing soul, to 
be manifested in the external, in our daily 
life. Thy will be done in the objective 
kingdom even as it is in the subjective 
kingdom. 

"Give us this day our daily bread" — give 
us strength and wisdom and understanding 
for the day. This has no reference whatso- 
ever to food. "And forgive us our sins as 
we forgive those that sin against us." So 
underneath all we are to be forgiven as we 
forgive others. "Forgive us our trespasses 
as we forgive." We are to be forgiven as 
wholly and just in proportion as we forgive 
other men. That is the law. We forgive 
ourselves in reality in the degree that we be- 
come forgiving. 

"And lead us not into temptation," — 
leave us not in temptation, but deliver us 

[80] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



from the one evil, — from the belief that 
there is anything opposed to the law of God. 
This is not a very profound interpretation 
of the Lord's prayer, but it is better to my 
mind than the other. The other was a 
prayer of postponement. The other was a 
prayer that led me to feel in some strange, 
inconceivable way, God was really leading 
me into temptation in order that my spir- 
itual muscles might be strengthened. Over 
against this we have those remarkable words 
of James the Apostle. "Let no man say 
when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; 
for God cannot be tempted with evil, 
neither tempteth he any man: But every 
man is tempted when he is drawn away of 
his own lust, and enticed." "Then when lust 
hath conceived it bringeth forth sin; and 
sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth 
death." "God tempteth no man." Then 
why ask God not to lead us into temptation? 
What would you think of your own child 
if he begged you every day, Please don't 
lead me into temptation, Father or Mother? 
You, who are desirous onlv for his spiritual, 

[81] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



mental, moral and physical welfare? What 
would you think if your own child made 
continually, morning, noon and night, re- 
quests that you would not lead him into 
temptation? You would wonder if he were 
not a little bit touched! You have no de- 
sire to do anything but to lead him into 
joy and happiness and strength and vigour 
and manliness. Is it not amazing that for 
all these centuries we have been asking God 
not to lead us into temptation? Is it not 
amazing that we have accepted the blind 
dictums of theological leaders without ques- 
tion? The blind surely have led the blind. 
Our teachers have been blind to the truth. 

Prayer with us in Divine Science is not 
petition. It is not asking God to be God. 
It is not asking Infinite Life to be anything 
other than what It is. It is not asking God 
to do that which he cannot do, namely: 
change his mind. And is this not prayer 
as it was taught in Old Thought — an almost 
continuous performance of asking God to 
change his mind? I was taught that many 
things came into my life as the direct result 

[82] 



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of the will of God, and then I was taught to 
ask God to remove these things or to change 
them, and I always ended my prayer with 
"if it be thy will, O God." This was be- 
cause I did not understand what Jesus 
taught concerning the will of God. It was 
because I did not understand concerning 
prayer. I was taught to believe that 
through continuous and continual prayer, 
I could change the unchangeable will of the 
Almighty. That if he deemed it wise and 
best for me to be diseased and sickly and 
sorrowful and suffering, I could by suffi- 
cient prayer, and sometimes by asking the 
prayers of the church, bring about a change 
in this supreme immutable will, and that 
which God originally intended to do, he 
would not do. Is it not ridiculous that we 
should be taught in theology that God is 
immutable, and that we should, at the same 
time, think or believe, and even communi- 
cate to others the idea that the immutable 
can be changed by persistent petition, when 
the very Bible says, "God changeth not." 
God is law; immutable, fixed, irrevocable 

[83 J 



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law. Not all the petitions ever uttered can 
change the will of God; but we must know 
what is the will of God. Some of us have 
been told, I, for instance, that it was the 
will of God that my child should be taken 
from me, and I accepted and believed it. I 
was a firm believer in ecclesiastical author- 
ity. I believed almost everything. Why? 
Because I had been taught when a child not 
to argue concerning the mysteries of the 
church. That if certain things happened 
too deep for my shallow mind to under- 
stand, I must accept them and the riddle 
would be solved some time, perhaps after 
death. I was told that my child was taken 
away from me to teach me a lesson; it was 
the will of God. I am not the only one 
who has been told this story. And then one 
day I found in the New Testament these 
words of Jesus, and I could not reconcile 
them with my previous teaching; — "It is not 
the will of God that one of those little ones 
should perish, but that they should have 
everlasting life." I have no doubt that the 
theologians of that day believed that it was 

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PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



the will of God that Bartimeus should have 
been born and remained blind. Consider 
for a moment that Jesus came here ex- 
pressly to do the will of the Father; this 
is what he said, "I came to do the will of 
my Father which is in heaven," and when 
Bartimeus there by the roadside cried out 
to him, "Jesus of Nazareth, save me," the 
disciples said, "You are making too much 
noise, he has other important work to do, 
don't bother him." And he cried the more, 
"Jesus of Nazareth, save me." And Jesus 
stopped short and said to his disciples, 
"What does he want?" They answered, "He 
is crying out to thee, he is blind." So Jesus 
turned back and asked the man, "What 
would you have me to do?" Bartimeus re- 
plied, "That I receive my sight." Jesus said, 
"Go thy way, realise that God is the sight of 
your eyes, and you have it. It is yourself." 
He did not pray God to restore sight. He 
simply showed the man inwardly, by spirit- 
ual contact, that he was then manifesting 
that sight, that inner sight, which is the sight 
of God, and he saw. Now if Bartimeus was 

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blind according to the will of God, and 
Jesus came to do the will of his Father, is 
it not strange that Jesus should revoke that 
which is so popularly believed to be the will 
of God? And again, if it be the will of God 
that you and I should be sick, what right 
have we to pray about it at all? Why peti- 
tion God for recovery or restoration to 
health and strength when perhaps it is his 
will that we should be weak and debilitated? 
I never saw the absurdity of these things, I 
never saw the ridiculous incongruity of them 
until I began to study along these lines and 
saw that the will of God is not a mutable 
weather cock moved about by the petitions 
of people everywhere, but that God is fixed, 
immutable law, and that law is Love. So 
I kept on praying and I never got an an- 
swer so far as any visible evidences were 
concerned. And this history is not peculiar 
to myself, I am sure. Is it not common 
experience? How are we going to solve 
this difficulty? Is it possible that we, like 
the disciples of old, are going to turn to 
him and say, "Lord, teach us to pray?" 

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We, who have prayed from our infancy up, 
are going to ask to be taught to pray in such 
a manner as to receive the blessings that 
were promised to him that prayed righteous- 
ly. We must become as little children, and 
learn all over again. As a little child I was 
taught to pray at night, so were you, — 

"Now I lay me down to sleep, 
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep. 
If I should die before I wake, 
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take." 

That gave me a picture of a God that was 
going to snatch me perhaps during the 
night, and sometimes I did not sleep for 
fear of it. That was the Old Thought. 
The New Thought is this: 

"Now I lay me down to sleep, 
I know that God his child doth keep. 
I know that God, my life, is nigh ; 
I live in Him and cannot die. 
God is my health, I can't be sick. 
God is all love, unfailing, quick, 

[87] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



God is my all. I know no fear, 
Since life and truth and love are here." 

My dear friends, this is a brief way of de- 
fining the difference between the Old and 
the New Thought prayer. One is the sup- 
plicating, petitioning kind, which asks God 
not to do something to us which he has no 
idea of doing; the other is the same, strong 
affirmation of the great triumphant fact that 
God is our life and we cannot die, that God 
is our health and we cannot be sick. It is 
the assertion of the real over against the 
apparent. It is the affirmation of our indis- 
soluble connection with all that is good and 
pure and permanent and changeless. It is 
a different order of prayer, and it is more 
gratifying. 

Now the question arises naturally, and 
often occurs to people who come to us for 
help, — "If this is effectual prayer, why can- 
not I pray for myself and get well?" How 
often we hear this! I have no doubt the 
people of Jesus' time asked the same ques- 
tions. "If the only method by which Jesus 

[88] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



restored the sick is the method of prayer, 
why cannot we pray just as well as he?" 
He never objected to it. I have no doubt 
he said, "You can. You can if you pray 
intelligently." The only difference between 
our prayers of to-day and our prayers of 
yesterday is the difference between intelli- 
gence and ignorance. 

All down the ages we have lived and 
moved and breathed in an ocean of infinite 
Life and Love and Truth, and have not 
been able to convert it into concrete mani- 
festation. Jesus took the invisible, utilized 
it and brought about visible results. We ad- 
mit that God is everywhere, and then pray 
to him as if he were really afar off, and not 
here at all. We are twisted. 

James, the Apostle, says: "A double 
minded man is unstable in all his ways. Let 
not that man think that he shall receive any- 
thing of the Lord." What does he mean 
by "double minded?" Perhaps you have 
read it a thousand times — most of you more 
than that, and what is the meaning these 
words convey to you? "A double minded 

[89] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



man is unstable in all his ways. Let not 
that man think that he shall receive any- 
thing of the Lord." No; so long as he is 
double minded, he will get no results. We 
are double minded if on one hand we believe 
in the omnipotence of God, and on the other 
hand we believe in the potency of evil. We 
are not single minded. We do not realise in 
our silent prayer that there is no potent in- 
fluence in the universe other than the Holy 
Spirit of Infinite Life. We pray to be pro- 
tected from the hate of one, the envy of 
another, the jealousy of men. We admit 
with our minds a thousand things that have 
no place and no power in the Infinite. We 
are not only double minded, but multiple 
minded. It is only the single minded man 
who is promised that his prayers shall be 
heard. "The effectual, fervent prayer of a 
righteous man availeth much," says the Bi- 
ble. "The effectual, fervent prayer of a 
righteous man." A righteous man is a man 
who thinks right, and a man who thinks 
right is a man who admits there is but one 
supreme power in the universe, but one real 

[90] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



actual presence in the universe, and holds 
to that in spite of all appearances; and he 
affirms constantly, "There is nothing here 
but God, Good." 

I know appearances are dead against us. 
But so it is in the world of astronomy. We 
say that the earth revolves upon its axis and 
that this disproves the assumption of a ris- 
ing and a setting sun, a moving sun. I am 
stating an astronomical fact, but my senses 
will not corroborate it. The profoundest 
astronomers in the world see the sun coming 
up and see it going down with their eyes, 
but their reason corrects the notion that it 
moves. "To the eye of vulgar logic" there 
is a rising and a setting sun. In the realm 
of "pure reason" there is no such thing. We 
are called upon to cling hard to the fact. 
"When your reason and your senses con- 
flict, cling unto your reason," says the wise 
man. You do so in every other department 
of investigation, why not in the Science of 
Spiritual investigation? 

If Jesus had admitted the reality, the un- 
changeability of the withered arm, do you 

[91] 



PRAYER IN DIYINE SCIENCE 



suppose he could have cured it? Jesus saw 
with the inner eye what the senses of man 
can never reveal. He saw the perfectness 
of the man as an idea in the Divine Mind, 
and this equipped him with power from 
on high to bring about so-called miracles. 
But they were not miracles at all. He was 
not setting aside any law ; he was co-operat- 
ing with and demonstrating the law. If by 
miracle we mean the setting aside of law, 
there is no such thing. If by miracle we 
mean the evolving from within ourselves of 
a divine Principle, of an ever-present force 
or energy or law, then there is a miracle. 
Jesus merely utilised what other men had 
lived and moved and breathed in ; he utilised 
God. That is what Edison is doing to-day. 
He is utilising that which we have lived and 
moved and breathed and been carried about 
in — God. The senses bear no more testi- 
mony to electrical energy than they give to 
the presence of God. Is this any reason 
for denying the presence of electrical en- 
ergy in the universe ? Not at all. Then are 
we justified in denying the presence and 

[ 92 ] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



power of God simply because we cannot see 
his presence with the physical eye? No. 
Does Edison petition electrical energy to 
manifest itself as light and heat and motive 
power? Not at all; he is too wise for that. 
He finds out the laws of electricity. He 
finds out the means by which this unseen 
and invisible force can be converted into 
seen and visible results. These are the pray- 
ers of Edison. Wonderful prayers. He 
has blessed the world with them. 

We do not petition the Principle of Be- 
ing; we simply learn its laws and co-operate 
with them and manifest our God-given 
dominion over our sense of limitation. Our 
privations are transmuted into privileges, 
and our difficulties become opportunities. 
We affirm "I am one with thee, O God!" 
with all it implies. "I am one with thee, 
O God, the Principle of life and happiness, 
truth and power. I am one with thee, O j 
Principle of Life! I am one with eternal 
Life!" You, too, can say with Jesus, "I 
and the Father are one." The effect. and 
its causes are inseparable. "Nerve me, O 

[93] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



God," says Emerson, "with ceaseless affir- 
mation of my divinity." These are our con- 
stant prayers. We are "Instant in prayer." 
Whenever temptation arises to suggest that 
we are mere mortals, subject to mortal law, 
so-called, subject to finite limitation, then 
we are nerved to ceaseless affirmation, to 
our oneness with God. We do not raise 
our hats or kneel in the streets or in the 
churches, but is this any reason for assert- 
ing that we are a prayerless people? 

Oh, Jesus was wise! He said to men, to 
the people, "Ye pray that ye may be heard 
of men," — then, turning to his disciples, he 
said, "Don't you pray that way. When 
you pray, enter into your closet, into the 
secret sanctuary of your own souls, and 
when you have shut the door — closed your 
senses by becoming conscious of the om- 
nipresence of God, pray to that inner Prin- 
ciple of Being that reposes at the very cen- 
tre of yourself, and your Father which 
seeth in secret shall reward you openly." 
That which took place in secret will pres- 
ently be seen in the visible. If you want 

[94] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



health, believe that health is the constant, 
persistent state of your being, and presently 
you shall manifest it in your body, but you 
will never manifest it in your body so long 
as you believe in an importation from with- 
out. So long as you believe that you have 
not got it, and call upon God to give it to 
you by some strange external method, just 
so long will you never get it. But once re- 
alise that it is within you, bubbling up like 
a well of life, once realise that it is your 
natural normal state, given you by God and 
sustained by the law of God, and then you 
will begin to say, "I am well, I am strong 
with the strength of the Holy Spirit;" and 
you will become stronger through your af- 
firmation of God's truth. These are your 
prayers — affirmations of truth. 

Take two boys out in the world ; one with 
nothing but will power, and the other with 
nothing but prayer and no will power, which 
will succeed? Think you all the prayer in 
the world can make a musician? or an elec- 
trician, or a mechanical engineer? It takes 
prayer plus performance, and performance 

[95] 



PRAYER IN DIVINE SCIENCE 



is always based upon affirmation — "I am, I 
can." These are the prayers in Divine Sci- 
ence. They are the moral affirmations of 
our divine possibilities. 

Let us affirm our divinity. Let us pray 
without ceasing. Let us daily affirm our 
spirituality, our strength, our life, our 
power to succeed. Let us not exist in the 
sense of limitation, but rise above it, rise 
above it by the all-conquering consciousness 
of our unity with God. "I will pray with 
the Spirit ; I will pray with the understand- 
ing also." In the omnipresence of God, we 
have all good, and it is ours eternally. As 
soon as we recognise our possession of good, 
we have the use of it. We can consciously 
possess only what we realise and claim. We 
recognise this all good, and accept it with 
thanksgiving. We also apply to our daily 
living the good we have received. 

"And all things whatsoever ye ask in 
prayer believing, ye shall receive." 

"Be sober, watch unto prayer, continue 
instant in prayer, and the God of all sub- 
stance shall supply your needs." 

[96] 



THE ATONEMENT 



"I and my Father are one. 

"If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall 
remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the 
Father. 

"That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me 
and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. 

"Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: 
yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now 
henceforth know we him no more. 

"But ye are not in the ilesh, but in the Spirit, if so 
be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. 

"For in him we live, and move, and have our being. 

"Christ in you the hope of glory. 

"For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 

"Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. 

"And ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's. 

"He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth 
forth much fruit: for without me, ye can do nothing." 



THE ATONEMENT 

"Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, be- 
cause he hath given us of his spirit." — I John 4: 13. 

This subject of the Atonement is one of 
such general belief, and yet one so poorly 
understood, especially in the world of denom- 
inational Christianity, that when one comes 
to study what the world calls the New 
Thought, or Divine Science, or Primitive, 
or Apostolic, or Applied Christianity, at 
once there arises the question : What of the 
atonement? So profoundly does the old 
thought hold to the atonement that the 
seeker hesitates very frequently to take ad- 
vantage of the healing efficacy of Divine Sci- 
ence and kindred philosophies, because some 
one has said that these do not believe in the 
atonement. 

I want to make it as clear as possible that 
we not only believe in the atonement, but 

[99] 



THE ATONEMENT 



through our studies we have come to a more 
glorified consciousness of what the atone- 
ment means. We not only believe in it, we 
understand it, in some degree and to some 
extent. If our views have changed concern- 
ing it, they have not changed for the worse, 
but rather for the better. We have, I be- 
lieve, a more satisfying concept of what the 
atonement really is. 

The belief in the atonement did not origi- 
nate with Jesus. When we begin to investi- 
gate the doctrine we find it as old as the 
human mind itself. Go back as far as we 
can in the history of the race, and we find a 
belief in a necessary atonement. Far back 
in the Dark Ages, when man had innumer- 
able gods, more or less vicious, more or less 
wrathful, angry, and jealous, there arose the 
necessity of atonement. The very earliest 
record we have is that which is set forth in 
the older Scriptures. In the Christian Bible, 
or the Hebrew Testament, we find the rites 
and rituals of a particular day, called the 
Day of Atonement, amplified and set forth 
with unerring accuracy. In a changed form 

[100] 



THE ATONEMENT 



the ceremony still exists among the Hebrew 
people. 

In order to arrive at a more satisfying' 
idea of what atonement means, it might be 
well for us to look back and see what it has 
meant to the race in the past. It has passed 
through many stages; and various and al- 
most innumerable concepts have been held 
by the mind of man, beginning, I think, with 
that definition of atonement set forth in our 
lexicons as appeasement. 

Atonement originally meant a method, a 
ceremony, or a means by which Deity was 
placated. The means by which the race at 
that time sought to appease the wrath of the 
Infinite, was to offer up innocent bulls, rams, 
goats, pigeons, and other living creatures. 
The earliest description we find of the Day 
of Atonement in the Old Testament, tells 
of the ceremonial use of two goats ; the blood 
of one was offered up as the first appease- 
ment of the wrath of God : this was the slain 
goat. The other was the scapegoat, over 
which the hands of the priest were held, and 
upon whose back was placed all the sins of 

[101] 



THE ATONEMENT 



the children of Israel; the goat was driven 
off into the wilderness, away from the 
haunts of men, and its own kind, either to 
live or die in solitude, as the case might be. 
It had done all that was required of it. The 
scapegoat had borne away upon its inoffen- 
sive and innocent back the sins of the chil- 
dren of Israel. 

As we come down through the Old Testa- 
ment we find a gradually changing concept 
of the atonement. We find the major and 
minor prophets alike declaring that the nos- 
trils of God are offended by the odours of 
the burnt offerings that the children of Is- 
rael are offering up to him on their mounts 
of sacrifice. We find the minor prophets, 
especially men like Hosea, Micah, and 
Amos, upbraiding the children of Israel be- 
cause of their belief that they can appease 
the wrath of the Infinite by any such method 
or procedure. 

But we find the Hebrews still clinging to 
rite and ceremony, to the old-established or- 
der of things, from which they cannot seem 
to get away. Even when our intellects be- 

C 102 ] 



THE ATONEMENT 



come persuaded of the error and foolishness 
of any practice, we still continue observing 
the old rite and ceremony with our custom- 
ary annual regularity, so tightly does habit 
hold the soul. The new dispensation 
changed nothing. 

When Jesus came, he found the Jewish 
thought of ceremonies still obtaining even in 
the minds of those who came to him for his 
teaching. They still believed in the wrath 
of God; they still believed in the necessity 
of appeasement. 

So, we find our New Testament writers 
placing an emphasis on the atonement which 
it should not have received: it is merely the 
interpretation born of their own preconceived 
theories. If at one time the wrath of God 
could be appeased only by the offering up 
of animal sacrifices, now nothing short of the 
innocent blood of his own beloved Son would 
suffice. 

And to-day, after two thousand years of 
Christianity, we find, to a greater or less de- 
gree, this peculiar theory concerning the 
atonement still holding the mind. Men still 

[ 103 ] 



THE ATONEMENT 



believe that the innocent blood of Jesus was 
shed for the remission of sins. To these it 
seems as if the belief were based upon Scrip- 
tural truth. But we must remember that 
those who came to Jesus were men whose 
minds still held the old idea of the sacrificial 
atonement, for which at one time an animal 
sufficed. And since they thought God must 
be appeased in some way, we find them nat- 
urally using their old theories for present 
purposes. 

Here we find that greatest of all sacri- 
fices, the innocent Jesus, suff ering for the 
sins of his people, not only those of his time, 
but yours and mine. There are those who 
believe that he died in order to save them 
from the consequences of their own sins ; that 
all they have to do is to profess to believe in 
the sacred name of Jesus, to believe that they 
are washed in the blood of the Lamb, and all 
their past errors and mistakes and sins will 
be wiped out by this vicarious atonement. 
. Divine Science does not uphold this the- 
ory. It does not believe that the glorious 
sacrifice of Jesus' self was a personal sacri- 

[ 104 ] 



THE ATONEMENT 



fice by the way of atonement for your sins 
or mine. We alone can do this — none can 
do it for us. 

If we have taken the atonement out of the 
category of appeasement and brought it into 
the category of reconciliation, we have made 
little progress indeed. The idea which ob- 
tains largely among modern theologians, is 
that the purpose of Jesus' great sacrifice was 
to reconcile God to man. If, in the begin- 
ning of the history of the race, we merely 
sought to appease the wrath of God through 
the offering up of animal sacrifices, and now 
through the death of his well-beloved Son 
we seek to reconcile God to the race, we 
still have not made much progress. 

The whole teaching of Jesus was the ex- 
act reverse of this. The whole burden of his 
song was that man should become reconciled 
to the law of God. The reconciliation was 
not on the part of God, but on the part of 
man : this was his whole teaching. 

He came not to make atonement, but to 
interpret it. He came not to go through a 
certain bloody sacrifice in order that this 

[105] 



THE ATONEMENT 



atonement might be brought about, but to 
acquaint us intelligently with the definition 
and the possibilities of atonement. 

We have three definitions given of the 
word atonement. The first is appeasement; 
the second is reconciliation; and the third is 
unification or unity or at-one-ment. It is 
this last interpretation which Divine Science 
prefers to use. Separate the word atone- 
ment and you find at-one-ment, which means 
being at one, not atoning for. 

The whole purpose of Jesus was not to die 
or to atone, but to make clear, to exemplify, 
man's at-one-ment with God; this was the 
real atonement of Jesus. 

Perhaps, you argue, it was the purpose of 
his Father to offer up his beloved Son as a 
sufficient expiation for our sins and all the 
sins of the race. It might seem so; just so 
long as we regard God in the light of a sym- 
pathising, loving, human parent, and no 
more j just so long we shall hold this idea. 

Let us suppose that a mutiny breaks out 
aboard a battleship in war-time. Let us sup- 
pose this mutiny threatens to hamper the 

[106] 



THE ATONEMENT 



fleet and destroy the particular ship on which 
it takes place; let us suppose, in addition, 
that the mutineers are arrested and tried. 
We all know that the usual sentence pro- 
nounced under such conditions is the sen- 
tence of death. 

Suppose that aboard this battleship is the 
Captain's only child. This son goes to his 
father and says: "I realise, Father, the das- 
tardly conduct of these sailors; I realise the 
evil consequences that may follow if such 
outbreaks are not stopped. But I also real- 
ise their ignorance, and that therefore they 
ought not pay the penalty of their offenses ; 
I offer myself in their place. I offer myself 
as a sufficient appeasement of your wrath. 
I offer myself as a sufficient substitute for 
their bodies." When you look at it from 
the point of personal sacrifice it is wonder- 
ful, marvellous, glorious. "Greater love hath 
no man than this, that he lay down his life 
for his friends." 

But, suppose the father accepts the son's 
offer ! No matter what we think of this son, 
no matter how gloriously we conceive of his 

[107] 



THE ATONEMENT 



character, no matter how we magnify his 
love and self-sacrifice: what shall we think 
of the father? 

What should we think of the human parent 
who accepted as a sufficient substitute for 
mutinous sailors his own inoffensive child? 
Yet, is not this the thing we have under- 
stood of the atonement: that God sent his 
only begotten Son into the world to die in 
order that we might live? 

What we want to do is to take the atone- 
ment out of the category of dispensations, 
and to relieve our minds of the thought that 
it was a providential occurrence. If it had 
been a providential occurrence, if he were 
predestined to it, Jesus would not be entitled 
to quite so much credit as we have been in 
the habit of bestowing upon him; because, 
if a man does what he is destined to do, and 
is given the strength and the grace to go 
through with it, there is not so much that is 
praiseworthy: he could not do anything else. 

If this is true concerning Jesus, is it not 
equally true concerning Judas, who be- 
trayed him? If it was a predestined tragedy 

[108] 



THE ATONEMENT 



or drama, intended to work out for the good 
of the race, why consider Judas the villain 
in the play, with hissing and execrations? 
Why should we go on down the centuries 
hissing one who was selected by the Great 
Playwright himself for the part, for a part 
that no other man in the universe could 
play? Why should we go on perpetually; 
applauding another for playing the charac- 
ter that was destined for him originally? 
Why should we applaud if the words he 
speaks were put in his lips and mouth, if the 
strength were put in his limbs, and the cour- 
age into his heart ? What credit is it to him, 
or what discredit to the other? These are 
questions for the thoughtful mind to pon- 
der. 

We believe in the atonement as the most 
necessary thing in the universe, but we can- 
not believe in it as we used to. So we take 
the third definition of the word, "to make 
at-one with." May I say that Jesus did not 
die quite so much to appease the wrath of 
God concerning the other children of God, 
as to appease the wrath of men? May I 

[109] 



THE ATONEMENT 



say that he did not die quite so much upon a 
demand on the part of God, as upon the part 
of men? According to our old teachings, we 
believed that God handed Jesus over to the 
world and said to the people of that time, 
"Crucify him! Crucify him!" But, if you 
study the New Testament carefully, you will 
find that it was the Pharisees who said "Cru- 
cify him!" 

Why did they demand the blood of the 
innocent Jesus ? Because he had proclaimed 
a great truth which was so contradictory and 
in such direct and utter opposition to any- 
thing they had ever believed before, that they 
at once proclaimed him a blasphemer. He 
declared the truth of the atonement. He 
never participated in a sacrificial ceremony, 
but he sought to make clear what the atone- 
ment was, and to define it as the at-one-ment 
of man with God. So he said, in the words 
of our text: "I am in the Father, and ye 
in me, and I in you." The moment he voiced 
this beautiful thought, the Pharisees said: 
"Crucify him! He maketh himself to be 
one with God, equal with God! Crucify 

[110] 



THE ATONEMENT 



him!" This was the first thing that dis- 
turbed and angered, or irritated them, this 
conviction that since he assumed more than 
any other man in the world had yet as- 
sumed, he was declaring himself to be equal 
with God! 

Since that day we have gone on believing 
that the thing had to be done, the crucifixion 
gone through, and that according to divine 
dispensation. Perhaps it was necessary for 
it to take place, but not according to divine 
dispensation quite so much as according to 
human ignorance and human anger. 

We are told it was his own Heavenly 
Father and not the Pharisees who preor- 
dained Jesus to the crucifix. It was the 
Pharisees who were agitated into a state of 
mind which demanded the blood of this in- 
nocent man. 

Then his own disciples, who had just 
enough of the Jew left in them, just enough 
of the old order of thought left to make the 
idea a natural one, conceived of his death as 
an atonement. Instead, it was the manifes- 
tation of his at-one-ment with the great Infi- 

cm] 



THE ATONEMENT 



nite Life. He was too great to kill, but in 
order that other men might know the truth, 
he laid down his life. 

The idea of the at-one-ment of Jesus is 
the idea of a tremendous love. All of the 
glory goes to Jesus because he did what he 
did not actually have to do, though some of 
us feel that he was obliged to do it; but in 
his own words, he said, "I have power to lay 
down my life, and power to take it again." 

He might have avoided the crucifixion if 
he had wished. He might have avoided all 
the harrowing and harassing conditions that 
preceded his crucifixion. It was not an in- 
cumbent necessity that he should die for you 
and me. He merely assumed the responsi- 
bility of proclaiming a great truth at the 
cost of angering others, at the cost of being 
misunderstood, at the cost of being misrep- 
resented and crucified. 

Always you will find Jesus speaking of 
his Heavenly Father as Love, Infinite Love. 
You will find him illustrating the great love 
of God in a speech to a few Pharisees stand- 
ing about: "What man is there of you, 

[ 112 ] 



THE ATONEMENT 



whom if his son ask bread, will he give him 
a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him 
a serpent?" Will God answer your prayers 
by giving you the very opposite thing to 
that for which you cry? 

To the mind of Jesus, God was Love. If 
he prophesied his crucifixion and death, he 
also prophesied his own resurrection and as- 
cension. But his prophecies of suffering 
were based, not so much upon the actions of 
a divine Providence, as upon the actions of 
men who did not understand him. 

If any one were to bring a new idea to the 
world to-day, he would be perfectly justified 
in proclaiming the fact, though the idea 
would not be adopted at once. Perhaps men 
would so misunderstand his motive that they 
would persecute him; they might hand him 
over to the authorities, or regard him simply 
as a harmless lunatic. Because he realised 
that man would not understand his mission, 
knowing also the nature of the men of his 
day, Jesus was able to prophesy his own de- 
struction, his own crucifixion. 

He knew the men of his time were so 
[113] 



THE ATONEMENT 



grossly ignorant as to be terribly vindictive. 
He realised if he said anything contrary to 
their fixed beliefs, anything that angered 
them, they would immediately rise against 
him and clamour for his blood. 

A man may proclaim almost any kind of 
a belief to-day and no one would think of 
crying "Crucify him!" But the customs of 
that far-off day were different, and Jesus 
knew, when he came and overturned one of 
their most cherished institutions; when he 
proclaimed an atonement that did away with 
blood sacrifice altogether, and made it a 
process of growth rather than a sacrificial 
offering; he was going to incur the venge- 
ance of the priests, because he was going 
against the established order of over two 
thousand years. He knew he was going to 
incur the anger, the hostility, the antago- 
nism, the hatred of the Pharisees ; though we 
are told that the common people heard him 
gladly. But those who cherished as their 
lives the rites and customs and ceremonies; 
to whom the sending of the scapegoat to the 

[114] 



THE ATONEMENT 



wilderness and the offering up of a bloody 
sacrifice was necessary, were aroused. 

Let us study the meaning of the atone- 
ment, and note its effect on the people of 
that day, with regard to its resulting in 
making them better men. When the mem- 
ory of the atonement, the ritual and the cere- 
monies were over, they went back to their 
fields and stores, to their false balances and 
usury and crookedness, only waiting another 
Day of Atonement to wipe it all out; only 
waiting another poor scapegoat to be sent 
into the wilderness to atone for their of- 
fences, century after century wiping out 
their misdeeds once a year. What wonder 
the minor prophets pleaded: "Of what 
value are your bloody sacrifices? They are 
a stench in the nostrils of God." 

Now, let us take the atonement of Jesus. 
Does each man, who believes in the atone- 
ment of Jesus, feel that the offering up of 
the blood of our Saviour has made sufficient 
recompense to Almighty God for his par- 
ticular sins? Has it? Does the Christian 
belief in the atonement, the offering up of 

[115] 



THE ATONEMENT 



the innocent blood of Jesus, save us from the 
penalty of our own wrongdoing? If it does, 
then the atonement is right as the theolo- 
gians put it. If the blood of Jesus was of- 
fered up for the remission of your sins and 
of mine, then the penalty due our sins has 
been remitted through this wonderful, mar- 
vellous, and most inexplicable sacrifice. 

But, even when we believe in this inter- 
pretation most perfectly, we go on our pe- 
culiar ways, living our peculiar lives, stand- 
ing up to-day and falling down to-morrow; 
therefore, nothing has been altered or remit- 
ted. It must mean vastly more than this; 
hence we take the third definition of the 
word: to unify, to make at-one-wiih; to es- 
tablish connection between the individual 
and the Universal ; to reveal to man his unity 
with the great Deific Principle. 

This was the only idea of atonement in 
the mind of Jesus. I do not think that it 
ever occurred to him that his dying on the 
crucifix was going to relieve you and me 
from the penalties of our own sins, or that 
we could be washed in "the blood of the 

[116] 



THE ATONEMENT 



Lamb," as we have used this phrase, if we 
meant to go on living a life of recklessness 
and sinfulness, then at the last, could say: 
"I believe in Jesus, I am washed in his re- 
deeming blood." 

That would not put us in the kingdom; 
mere belief will not do us any good. It 
must be more than that. Jesus said: "Be- 
lieve in God, believe also in me." He might 
have gone further and added: "Believe in 
yourselves; believe that you, too, are the 
sons of God, and believe it so thoroughly 
that you will act according to your belief; 
this will bring about the atonement." 

We do not believe that God will be angry 
with his own children. We do not believe 
that he has to be reconciled to us. We know 
he has no grudge against us. If we realise 
the fact that we are spiritual beings and not 
material, that we are now the children of 
God, gradually we are brought into at-one- 
ment in consciousness, and we become con- 
sciously at-one with the All-Good, the Per- 
fect, the Permanent. 

This is the idea of atonement that Divine 
[117] 



THE ATONEMENT 



Science is bringing to all men. This is tak- 
ing it out of the sacrificial, out of the low, 
the vulgar, the gross, and bringing it up 
into the beautiful and the holy. 

It does not do away with the atonement; 
it beautifies it; it makes it a spiritual state 
to you and to me. 

We believe also in sacrifice, but not in 
blood atonement. We believe that if we 
sacrifice our evil habits on the altar of Infi- 
nite Love; if we sacrifice our lusts, our an- 
ger, our jealousies, our wrath, our indolence; 
that we shall then be more alive to the great 
fact that God is not a wrathful God, not a 
jealous God; that He does not require ap- 
peasement, nor to be reconciled to us, be- 
cause God has no grudges and holds none 
against us. Does it shock some of you to 
know that it is impossible to offend God? 
It might, considering the fact that you as 
children were taught that whenever you 
committed a sin you did offend God, con- 
sidering the fact that perhaps you are now 
teaching your own children that whenever 
they commit a sin they are offending God. 

[118] 



THE ATONEMENT 



It is just as impossible for man to offend 
God by sin as it is for man to offend the 
principle of mathematics by creating mathe- 
matical errors — just as impossible. Our mis- 
takes could not offend God in the slightest, 
any more than the errors of a musician affect 
the great principle of musical harmony. It 
goes on the same, yesterday, to-day, and for- 
ever, and is never affected by any deviation 
whatsoever on the part of the musician. The 
principle of mathematics is never changed 
in the slightest degree as a result of the er- 
rors which children make in schoolrooms, ac- 
countants make in banks or other places. 
So it is that your sins, your errors of thought 
and conduct, have never and can never of- 
fend God. That is the great beauty of the 
thought of God as impersonal Divine Prin- 
ciple. 

We do not have to reconcile the sun to 
let its rays shine upon us. We do not have 
to reconcile the sun to an object in a dark 
alley; all we have to do is to move the ob- 
ject, and place it in the sun's beneficent 
rays. All we have to do is to move out of 

[119] 



THE ATONEMENT 



the darkness, out of our spiritual ignorance, 
to be taken out, if you prefer, from this be- 
lief in the necessity of any one man in the 
universe atoning for any other man's sins. 

Perhaps you are wondering what I am 
thinking of the wonderful sacrifice of Jesus? 
Perhaps you are wondering if in my own 
mind I am belittling it? Only a few pages 
back I said that he did not have to do it; it 
was not an incumbent necessity placed upon 
him by his Heavenly Father. He did it vol- 
untarily, and herein, to my mind, lies the 
great grandeur of the character of Jesus, 
that he did that voluntarily which perhaps 
you and I could not be dragged into doing. 
He did it by the exercise of a tremendous 
love, which you and I are trying to culti- 
vate, and, I trust, with some small measure 
of success. He realised that there was no 
other way out of it. To withhold the truth 
from the race to save his own life would have 
been cowardly. To proclaim the truth and 
take all the terrible risk of so doing in order 
that you and I might know the truth, was 

[120] 



THE ATONEMENT 



heroic, but from the standpoint of a provi- 
dential dispensation, not necessary. 

Some one has said that responsibilities 
gravitate in the direction of the man who is 
willing to assume them. I want you to bear 
that thought in mind. It is a good thought. 
You cannot have lived long nor had much 
experience if you have not seen the truth of 
the statement. The big men in the world 
are the men who have been willing to assume 
responsibilities. The little men in the world 
are the men who never wanted to assume 
responsibility. 

Jesus was one of the greatest men in the 
world and he assumed the greatest and big- 
gest responsibility, the responsibility of pro- 
claiming the at-one-ment of man with God, 
and at the very real risk of being accused of 
blasphemy, a death-penalty crime in his day. 

The people of the time were not so gener- 
ous to contrary views as they are to-day. 
They did not try him for heresy, though they 
proclaimed him to be a heretic; they de- 
manded his blood, and their demand was 
heeded. 

[121] 



THE ATONEMENT 



But what to them was the finish of a man, 
was to him the beginning of a principle. 
What to them was the destruction of his life, 
was to him the opportunity for the exercise 
of his constructive faculty. He took an op- 
portunity to prove the supremacy of life 
over death, of love over hate, of truth over 
error. And so he has handed down to you 
and to me the possibility of one man, though 
falsely accused, doing something by which 
all men might be benefited and blessed. 

You see, I am reverently trying to take 
the atonement out of the category of com- 
placent necessity and put it where it be- 
longs, on the plane of individual responsi- 
bility voluntarily assumed. He took it up 
as his part in the great play of life and car- 
ried it out like the man he was. This is, to 
me, the great glory of the character of Jesus. 
He manifested all the godly qualities in the 
fulness of their beauty, grandeur, might, 
and power, because he did what he was not 
required, but what he thought was right; he 
did it to establish the fact that you and I and 
the man down the street are at one with God. 

[122] 



THE ATONEMENT 



Jesus established the new dispensation and 
the new idea of the atonement; infinitely- 
greater than offering up his own body on 
the crucifix was the offering up of himself, 
and when I say himself, I mean his human 
self, his human appetites and pleasures, in 
order that he might take on divine attributes 
and joys. Atonement means just this to 
you and me. 

We have always been one with God. If 
we are not conscious of it, it is our misfor- 
tune. If we do not realise our at-one-ment, 
it is a pity. But once we do begin to realise 
it, in the degree of our realisation, we begin 
to live, in accordance with our one-ness. We 
begin to live like God, in the godly, higher 
nature. 

That is the only possible proof of at-one- 
ment. A mere belief in the atonement does 
not help us. A million can believe for one 
who can prove it, even in the smallest de- 
gree. Jesus not only believed it, he exem- 
plified it. In every act and thought of his 
life, in everything he did, he showed his 
unity with God. In laying down his own 

[123] 



THE ATONEMENT 



mortal life, while proclaiming immortality 
through the resurrection of Lazarus, he not 
only lived the Life, but demonstrated it. It 
was not merely a beautiful life, it was a pow- 
erful life. It was Creative Life. 

It not only healed the sin-sick soul, if you 
believe the Gospels, but it healed the suffer- 
ing soul of its bodily infirmities. Because 
the power of God was with him, it not only 
brought comfort to the sorrowful, but 
strength to the weak, sight to the blind, 
hearing to the deaf. He did, not what he 
was ordained to do, but what he assumed as 
his part: the proclamation of the truth. 

This, perhaps, changes the colour of the 
atonement, but it is far more satisfying to 
us in Divine Science than the old belief that 
the blood of bulls and goats appeased the 
wrath of a far-away God. It is far more 
satisfying than the idea that the innocent 
Son of God offered up his own life on the 
accursed cross in order that we might avoid 
the consequence and punishment of our sins. 
It becomes beautiful the moment we think 
of it as the proclamation for every man 

[124] 



THE ATONEMENT 



in the universe, that consciously or uncon- 
sciously, he is the son of God. 

The great change that is necessary is the 
change in consciousness. Of what avail is 
it to be free and not to know it? Of what 
avail is it for a man to be in a prison cell 
with the doors unlocked so that he could 
walk out, if he is not conscious of the fact 
that the doors are unlocked? After years 
of imprisonment, labouring under the con- 
tinual belief that the door is locked and ut- 
terly impassable, he will conclude that it is 
his home for the rest of his life, and will 
never make an attempt to leave it. If, in 
the secrecy of the night, some one had 
turned the lock and suggested to the prison- 
er that he come out, and the prisoner should 
walk up and down his cell, just as he had 
always done, hearing but not accepting the 
suggestion, labouring under the belief that 
the door was still locked, would he not be 
free and captive at the same time? And 
would not his captivity be the captivity of 
his ignorance? The race, for the most part, 
is stalking up and down in the cage of 

,[ 125 ] 



THE ATONEMENT 



spiritual ignorance. The lock was turned 
some centuries ago by Jesus; but, through 
misinterpretation, we have come to feel that 
we are just as much prisoners to the senses, 
just as much captives to the body, just as 
much slaves to sensation, as the race ever 
was at any time in the world's history. We 
go up and down performing the same tired, 
weary walk, century in and century out, 
never knowing that we are free, never real- 
ising that we can come out into the great 
broad daylight and sunlight of the presence 
of God, because we do not know that we are 
at-one with God. We feel that we must 
atone for our past, and so we must ; but not 
to God. 

At first it may seem blasphemous for a 
self-confessed sinner to proclaim his unity 
with God. But is this self-confessed sinner 
ever going to be anything other than a sin- 
ner so long as we proclaim his separateness 
from God? 

If because of evil habits and poverty he 
has allowed himself to be held away from 
God, when he begins to consciously feel he 

[ 126 ] 



THE ATONEMENT 



is one with the Infinite, he knows that he is 
not a sot, but a spiritual being, that he is 
not a drunkard, but a manifestation of di- 
vinity. Does not this consciousness circu- 
late through him, strengthening him and 
mending every nerve of his body, and does 
it not show in his face? Is it not from this 
and through this that he begins to lift him- 
self above his past, getting away from his 
dead self, to arise and go to his Father? 

Just so long as a man believes himself at 
odds with God, just so long as he feels he 
can never become one with the Infinite, just 
so long he will continue to be a drunkard, 
and poor and sick and diseased. It cannot 
be otherwise. 

At-one-ment with Life and Truth and 
Power and Peace comes through the realis- 
ing sense of our at-one-ment with the In- 
finite, and not through a belief that some 
one else has paid the penalty for our 
crimes. 

Your reformation and my reformation 
depend upon the realising sense of our spir- 
ituality, followed by the determination to 

[127] 



THE ATONEMENT 



put that spirituality foremost and prove it, 
demonstrate it. To do this we must feel 
consciously at one with the Deific Power. 

This is the atonement. The only sacrifice 
that is necessary is the sacrifice of our pre- 
conceived theories, our mistakes, our errors 
of judgment, and our ignorances. These 
things, which are not necessary to our well 
being, to our happiness, to our health, we 
are to offer up on the altar of Love. Thus 
we shall find our true sense of at-one-ment. 

"Behold, what manner of love the Father 
hath bestowed upon us, that we should be 
called the sons of God: therefore the world 
knoweth us not, because it knew him not. 

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, 
and it doth not yet appear what we shall 
be : but we know that, when he shall appear, 
we shall be like him; for we shall see him 
as he is. 

"And every man that hath this hope in 
him, purifieth himself, even as he is pure." 



[ 128 ] 



LIFE 



"He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent 
me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemna- 
tion; but is passed from death unto life. 

"I am come that they might have life, and that they 
might have it more abundantly. 

"He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. 

"Because I live, ye shall live also. 

"In Christ shall all be made alive. 

"As the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to 
the Son to have life in himself: 

"For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall 
we see light. 

"And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the 
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. 

"My words are life to those that find them, and health to 
all their flesh. 

"For to be carnally minded is death: but to be spiritually 
minded is life and peace. 

"I have set before thee this day life and good, and death 
and evil. 

"Therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may 
live." 



LIFE 

"By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see 
death; and was not found, because God had translated 
him: for before his translation he had this testimony, 
that he pleased God." — Hebrews 11:5. 

Life, without doubt, is the most serious of 
all the subjects with which the human mind 
has to deal. It is so serious that in all gen- 
erations and among all people it has been 
approached from every possible angle, and 
men have studied life from protoplasm to 
infinity. Through the science of evolution 
men have studied life from the mineral to 
mind; biologists have made remarkable dis- 
coveries in the phenomena which we call 
visible or objective life; all of which shows 
that the human mind regards the study of 
life as the most essential in the universe. 
When I say the human mind, I wish to be 
understood as meaning, in this connection, 
the progressive mind, the thoughtful, in- 

[131] 



LIFE 

vestigative, divinely curious, mind; because, 
there are those to whom life, unfortunately, 
is not something to be studied, to whom 
life is not a thing to be scientifically or 
wisely directed, but something to be waded 
through as best one can. There are those, 
and I sometimes think they are in the great 
majority, who feel that life is rather a 
game of chance, something that they do not 
know anything about, something they con- 
fessedly admit they cannot know anything 
about. According to their own logic, they 
are here without their own consent; accord- 
ing to this same logic, they are just as un- 
ceremoniously removed hence. To such as 
these, life is therefore a transient experience 
which begins with infancy and ends with 
death, whether through old age, disease, or 
sudden accident. This is the popular idea 
concerning life: the human experience em- 
braced between that part of life which we 
call the cradle period and the other which 
we call the coffin period. 

Life is vastly more than this. The larger 
interpretation of God and the newer thought 

[ 132 ] 



LIFE 

of things are bringing us to a fuller sense of 
the clearer interpretation of life. Without 
this clearer interpretation, life is hardly 
worth living. It is fraught with chance and 
change. If we are inclined to be pessimistic 
at all, cast down by personal experiences, we 
regard life as a rather toilsome, tiresome sort 
of thing; we regard this invisible world of 
ours as a veritable vale of tears, something 
we would like to get through with as quickly 
as possible. Therefore, life must be studied, 
not from the merely biological point of view, 
nor from the physiological, nor the intellec- 
tual, but rather from the purely spiritual; 
because, after all, the only point of view we 
can get of life which is really scientific, is 
the spiritual. Even the so-called material 
scientists are arriving at this conclusion. 
Modern chemistry is revealing to us that 
matter is neither life-giving nor life-sustain- 
ing; that it is not something which acts 
upon, but something which is acted upon, 
and this by an invisible, underlying princi- 
ple which one might as well call Life, or 
God, or Spirit, or Love, as anything else. 

[133] 



LIFE 

It is the invisible Reality of which all exter- 
nal manifestations are but so many projec- 
tions into space. These are the conclusions 
that modern physical science is arriving at. 

And so we see that modern material sci- 
ence is arriving, by the slow, tortuous intel- 
lectual method, at the same conclusion Jesus 
reached by the more direct intuitional meth- 
od of the Holy Spirit. 

After all, life is invisible. TsTo one has 
ever seen life. You cannot touch, taste, 
smell, see, hear, or feel it. Life is like mind 
in this: none of the senses can take cogni- 
sance of it. All that we have ever seen of 
life are its visible manifestations. So most 
of us have studied life from the standpoint 
of its visible manifestations, just as most of 
us have studied nature from the standpoint 
of her visible manifestations ; we have taken 
nature's convulsions, as well as nature's 
beauties, as evidences of what she is capable 
of accomplishing. We have regarded na- 
ture as benevolent on the one hand and ma- 
levolent on the other, constructive on one 
side and destructive on the other — all be- 

[134] 



LIFE 

»^— ^^— — ■■■ — ■■!■■■ II I I — ^— ■ ■ ■ I — ■ | .. ,,, 

cause we have watched the natural or visible 
manifestations of what we call invisible na- 
ture. 

When it comes to studying life, we take it 
from this same objective point: we look with 
eyes. We see it coming into birth. We see 
what we call life, gay, pleasant, and joyful, 
or sad, unpleasant and sorrowful. We see it 
ending in death. And this, in the past, we 
have been pleased to call life, is nothing 
more nor less than the imperfect manifesta- 
tions of it on the visible plane. The science 
of ontology, which is superior to the science 
of biology, evolution, or physiology, sug- 
gests to the inquisitive mentality — the 
divinely curious mind — the necessity for 
studying life at first hand and not accord- 
ing to any of its visible manifestations; we 
are therefore called upon to study life from 
the standpoint of the purely spiritual or the 
purely scientific. 

Life is not what we call life. Jesus said 
that life eternal consisted in a knowledge of 
the only true God. "This is life eternal, 
that they might know thee, the only true 

[135] 



LIFE 

*m^ "^ m^mmm — — — — — — — ^— — — — 

God." Life eternal consists of knowledge. 
There are those who are perfectly satisfied 
with the manifestations of things. For in- 
stance: A man will go into a room, touch 
a button, see that the room is suffused with 
light, and never stop to question the phe- 
nomenon. It is nothing to him. His sole 
interest is to see that the room is properly 
lighted, his sole care to touch the button; 
everything is done for his convenience. But 
there are those divinely curious persons who 
are not satisfied with the phenomenon, they 
are not satisfied that the room is suffused 
with light at a mere touch of a button. They 
must know why; they must investigate the 
science of it. Why does this phenomenon 
take place? The mentally indolent man 
says: "It is nothing to me. I do not care 
why or how or by what method or science it 
takes place. All I am concerned in know- 
ing is that it does take place. I am satisfied 
to have the light." But when the switch will 
not work, it is the divinely inquisitive man 
who is able to rectify things. The other man 

[136] 



LIFE 

■ 

must either remain in the dark or get the 
assistance of some other person. 

Thus it is with life. The mentally indo- 
lent man does not care anything about life 
in the abstract; he is more concerned about 
life in the concrete — how to enjoy it, how 
to get the most out of it, and almost invari- 
ably from a merely physical point of view; 
how he is going to cater to what he calls life, 
representing to him nothing higher than the 
merely physical; how he is going to enjoy 
himself without suffering the consequences; 
how he is going to indulge his passions with- 
out going through the necessary aftermath 
of pain. These are the things that trouble 
his mentality — beyond them, he has no other 
concern. 

Life is not physical. For those who be- 
lieve that the sustenance of life depends upon 
the physical, we can again call modern sci- 
ence to our aid to convince them of their 
mistake. It is comforting to know that 
twentieth century science is corroborating 
first century Christianity. It is very com- 
forting to me to know that men like Sir Oli- 

[137] 



LIFE 

ver Lodge, Lord Kelvin, and others, by sci- 
entific, intellectual processes, are arriving at 
the very same point of view Jesus held so 
many hundreds of years ago — that life is 
not sustained by matter. 

This is made very clear to us when we 
take the grosser form of physical foods. 
Men graduate away from what we call the 
material : the mineral food, the things of the 
earth ; and we see how very much more neces- 
sary the fluids are to man's physical life. It 
is demonstrated beyond peradventure, that 
water is more necessary to the sustenance of 
physical life than is solid food; that is, we 
can live longer without mineral food than 
we can without water. Again, we go up 
into the element of air; we can live longer 
without water and mineral food than we can 
without air. And now the physical scien- 
tists tell us that back of the air, without 
which it is impossible for us to live, or move, 
or breathe, there is that imponderable ether, 
which is as much more refined than air as air 
is more refined than the vegetable or the 
mineral. There are those who are now be- 

[138] 



LIFE 

— ■ »— ^ — ■ ^ — ^— — ^— ^ — «^___^ ■„ ^.^^^^ 

ginning to tell us that the ether corresponds 
to that breath of God which is spoken of in 
the Bible. It is the medium by which men 
live and move and breathe, and without 
which men could not do any of these things. 
Consequently, we see that even on the plane 
of the purely physical, the sustenance of life 
depends more on the invisible things than 
on the visible. When this lesson is learned, 
as it is being slowly but surely learned in 
almost every department of thought, men 
will eat less and live longer. 

The day has gone by when physical life 
is to be sustained by the quantity of food. 
It is even now among the naturapaths and 
others a question of quality. We are eating 
less; we are enjoying better health, and 
there is an increasing longevity on the part 
of the race, all because we are getting away 
from the idea of the merely physical and ma- 
terial. 

The text that we have chosen for our dis- 
course is tremendously interesting: interest- 
ing from the fact that though it has been 
accepted by manv, it has been ridiculed by 

" 1 139 ] 



LIFE 

many others. Ridiculed by those who do not 
understand its spiritual significance, it has 
been accepted with the same lack of under- 
standing, just as unquestionably as the man 
who accepts the fact that there will be light 
in a room if he can touch an electric button. 
We have accepted these great facts in Bib- 
lical literature unquestioningly, and yet 
back of them all, there is a spiritually scien- 
tific import, which, when understood, will 
enable us to do in the degree that we under- 
stand it, just what Enoch did. It is said, 
"By faith Enoch was translated that he 
should not see death." By faith! The word 
faith has come to have a very narrow mean- 
ing; to most of us, it represents a sort of 
blind trust, a confidence in something that 
we cannot understand, an acceptance of 
something that we cannot unravel. We 
think of this peculiarity of mind as responsi- 
ble, in the early days, for the strange mani- 
festations of men like Elijah, Enoch, and 
Jesus — a blind trust in an invisible force or 
power; when, as a matter of fact, the word 
faith in the original Hebrew meant knowl- 

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LIFE 

edge. If we substitute the word knowledge 
for faith j we shall read it in this way: By 
knowledge Enoch was translated that he 
should not see death. 

It is by knowledge that we are all trans- 
lated. The word translate means to change, 
to be removed from; by knowledge we are 
changed. Our opinions change from day to 
day as the result of exact knowledge or sci- 
entific demonstration. We are removed 
from our old conceptions every day that we 
think. We are taken away from things, 
which yesterday we regarded as true, and 
transplanted into a new atmosphere. 

Through true knowledge, Enoch arrived 
at the conclusion that life was sustained from 
above and not from beneath. He realised 
that life is far more than the merely mate- 
rial, infinitely more than the merely intellec- 
tual. He penetrated beneath the surface of 
things and reached the very foundation of 
what constitutes life. Thus he saw that life 
is and always must be — God. The more he 
could know about God, the more he would 
know about life. This is why Jesus said, 

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n 



LIFE 

"This is life eternal, that they might know 
thee, the only true God" — the only true 
Life. 

Regarding life from the standpoint of the 
physical, we never know God, we never 
know what life is, and so we are told Enoch 
was translated because he had faith or un- 
derstanding of a Divine Principle. 

In another part of this wonderful testi- 
mony to eternal life or immortality in the 
flesh, we are told that Enoch walked and 
talked with God : that is, Enoch lived the di- 
vinely contemplative life; he felt a sense of 
nearness to the source of things. He per- 
suaded himself of the great fact that his 
life was God, and the more fully he became 
persuaded of this fact, the more fully he 
began to live his life, his spiritual life, his 
real life, because, after all, a man has not 
two lives. He has not a physical, mortal 
life, which begins and ends, and another 
spiritual and immortal life, which neither 
begins nor ends. This lesson we must learn 
sometime, somehow, somewhere ; whether we 
learn it now in this chamber of the Father's 

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LIFE 

^^— — ■ ■■■ ■ I ■ ■ .I-..-.... . ■■!■ ■ » ■— 

house, or in the other after what we call 
death, does not make any difference, except 
that it is wiser for us to begin here. 

We must learn that life is one, not two; 
we must learn what life is, and then we shall 
begin to live it: live it fully, gloriously, 
profitably, painlessly. The only sense that 
most of us have had of life has been that of 
mortal existence — a sort of coming in at one 
wing of the stage and going out at another, 
a passage through, but never anything fixed 
or permanent. Mortal life has been the only 
sense of life we have ever had; because of 
this, we have never really received from life 
all life contains for us. 

After all the only life is the spiritual life 
and this holds true, not only after death, but 
now. Of course, there are those who doubt 
life after death ; but most of us are perfectly 
willing to admit that immortality is a fact 
which will be proven, which will be demon- 
strated after we die. 

But this was not the teaching of Jesus. 
We are told that the mission of Jesus was 
to bring life and immortality to light. Now 

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LIFE 

when you bring a thing to light, you make it 
manifest. It was to bring immortality to 
light, to reveal to humanity the great fact 
that immortality is not a post-mortem ex- 
perience but a present possibility, that he 
came. Jesus had not added to the world's 
knowledge at all if he merely came to preach 
immortality after death. The Pharisees be- 
lieved it, the ancient Egyptians believed it; 
the Israelites from time immemorial had be- 
lieved in immortal life after death. What 
Jesus came for, then, was to reveal immor- 
tality now, to bring it to light, to make of it 
a personal attainment in this day and in this 
generation. He demonstrated it in his own 
experience; Elijah demonstrated it; Enoch 
demonstrated it. Most of us, especially in 
the older churches, are prone to regard these 
experiences as deviations from the natural 
order of things, when, as a matter of fact, 
they are nothing more nor less than the ex- 
ternal manifestation of an internal coopera- 
tion with the Divine Principle. They were 
not strange and unusual experiences that 
could never be demonstrated again. They 

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LITE 

were the natural results of men's under- 
standing of the principle of life and their 
own identification with it ; and wherever men 
have understood the science of life from a 
purely spiritual point of view, infallibly, 
longevity has been the result. 

To understand life as purely spiritual 
here and now, and to live the life purely 
spiritual here and now is to avoid a great 
many of the painful consequences that go 
with the opposite belief. To overcome fear 
is, perhaps, the greatest necessity to-day. 
What a hindrance it is to our success in 
life, to the enjoyment of peace, to happi- 
ness and to health ! What a terrible sin it is ! 
To stigmatise fear as sin is hardly consistent 
with our old teaching, and yet to those of 
you who have studied the New Testament, 
it must be very apparent that John the 
Apostle regarded fear as the most vicious 
of all sins. He puts it at the very head of 
all sins: "To the fearful, and unbelieving, 
and the abominable, and murderers, and the 
sorcerers" ; he speaks of these as all being 
outside of the kingdom, meaning by the 

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LIFE 

kingdom, the kingdom of happiness and joy. 
The fearful ! He headed the list with these. 
When we say that fear is a sin, we speak 
advisedly, because it is a lack of trust in that 
supreme Life which is God; it is a lack of 
faith in one's own divine possibilities. It 
brings with it lack of control over one's emo- 
tions, over one's sensations, over one's af- 
fairs. It is blighting, demoralising, diseas- 
ing, and death-dealing. 

How overcome it? The one great thing 
that enables us to conquer fear is the reali- 
sation of what life is, to realise that life 
is perpetual, indestructible, eternal, and 
forever spiritual; to realise that nothing 
can deprive us of it. Without it we 
would not be. Life is the foundation, the 
superstructure, the divine reality of each 
and every individual; separated from it we 
cannot be. When once this great fact 
dawns upon the consciousness of the awak- 
ened mind, fear subsides; we know that 
there is no death; we know that life is the 
unbreakable reality. At first it is merely 
an intellectual thing. Then, as we walk and 

[146] 



LIFE 

talk with God, who is Life, and dwell upon 
the great facts of being, it becomes a spir- 
itual possession. Ills disappear, diseases 
flee, health springs forth speedily, strength 
increases, and life becomes a joy because we 
know now its indestructibility. We know 
now that it is not confined to that period af- 
ter death or before birth, but is that which 
knows no break; not even human birth nor 
human death can interfere with it any more 
than the putting on of the lights and turn- 
ing them off can interfere with electric 
energy. You do not change the unchange- 
able electric energy of the universe when 
you turn on the lights or turn them off 
again, when you run the elevator up or bring 
it down again. That is static. Electric 
energy is the same, yesterday, to-day and 
forever; all you do with it is to appropriate 
it and to stop appropriating it. 

All that we are doing here on this plane 
of consciousness is appropriating life — uti- 
lising it, if you please, and frequently very 
poorly. We are here to utilise life, and we 
utilise it in very much the same manner as 

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LITE 

we utilise electric energy; we turn it on 
and we turn it off again. We enjoy it or 
we put it out ; we practically do as we please 
with it, because we are the individuals who 
give direction to that energy which we call 
life or the spirit. That is our function in 
life. We shut it off through fear, we enjoy 
it through courage. 

Enoch was translated. The discouraging 
feature about this text is that sometimes we 
read it as if it were an instantaneous experi- 
ence with Enoch. We read it as if it were 
some strange and unusual proceeding which 
took place in a night, when, as a matter of 
fact, the translation of Enoch had been go- 
ing on from his early youth. By degrees, 
he had become better acquainted with life. 
The fact that he walked and talked with God 
reveals the other fact that he was a contem- 
plative individual, that he thought of life 
from its purely spiritual point of view and in 
its purely spiritual aspect, and because of it 
life became to him boundless, unending, 
most enjoyable. 

Jesus' resurrection, his ascension, and res- 
[148] 



LIFE 

toration of life to Lazarus, and to the daugh- 
ter of Jairus, were all indications of a pro- 
found knowledge of what life is. Jesus 
knew that the life of Lazarus was God; he 
knew that the life of Jairus' daughter was 
God ; he knew that his own life was God, and 
by reason of his knowledge, he demonstrated 
his spiritual life, on what we call a material 
plan. He objectified his knowledge of truth 
and he said to you and to me, in that won- 
derful but somewhat mystic book of Revela- 
tions, "To him that overcometh will I give 
to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst 
of the paradise of God." 

The book of Revelations is mystic, but it 
is not on this account meaningless. On the 
contrary, who has eyes to see may see; he 
who has an understanding heart may un- 
ravel the divine mysteries and may find for 
himself on these sacred pages the science by 
which he may live longer and more enjoy- 
ably. "To him that overcometh will I give 
to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst 
of the paradise of God." Overcometh what? 
That is the great question. What are we to 

[149] 



LIFE 

overcome? In the old churches we know 
that we are to overcome sin, and by sin we 
mean those crude and gross and coarse 
forms of licentiousness. We know that we 
are to overcome the murderous instinct, the 
thieving instinct, the adulterous instinct; we 
know that we are to overcome the lower pas- 
sions and the lower vices and viciousness of 
the carnal mind. But Jesus meant infinitely- 
more than this. He knew that even when 
men overcome these low animal tendencies, 
they have not yet overcome their fear of 
death. They have not yet overcome their 
belief in a life apart from God. They still 
believe in a physical lif e which can begin and 
end. Even though men have overcome all 
of these lower instincts, even though men 
are what the world would call strictly 
moral men, they are nevertheless unright- 
eous. That is, they are unright in their 
judgment. They have not overcome their 
belief in death. Until we overcome that be- 
lief all of our lifetime we shall be in bondage 
to the fear of it. 

The righteous man is just as much afraid 
[ 150 ] 



LIFE 

of death as the unrighteous man, except that 
he has a changed belief concerning it. He 
is not nearly so afraid to meet his God as is 
the unrighteous man, but he believes that he 
can only meet his God through death. He 
does not realise that he may walk and talk 
with God on this plane of consciousness. 
He believes that death is the necessary ma- 
trix of immortality. He believes that the 
experience of death is the only means by 
which he may enter into the presence of that 
Eternal Life which is God, when, as a mat- 
ter of fact, it is totally inconsistent with the 
teachings of Jesus, "That they might know 
thee, the only true God; this is life eternal. ,, 
Life eternal consists in spiritual under- 
standing, and that must begin here. The 
more we get of it, the more life we shall 
have. In ancient literature, we read some- 
thing that is really interesting concerning 
this "tree of life which is in the midst of the 
paradise of God." Ancient literature and 
ancient art picture the tree of life as having 
its roots in the air, apparently attached to 
nothing, with its fruit-bearing branches lean- 

[151] 



LITE 

ing in the direction of the earth ; our picture, 
the modern representation of the garden of 
paradise, or the garden of Eden, represents 
it with its roots in the earth, with its fruit- 
bearing branches extending upward. The 
idea of the older mysticism was that life is 
not sustained by sinking the roots of thought 
into materiality ; rather is it sustained by lift- 
ing the roots of thought in the direction of 
the Holy Spirit into apparent nothingness, 
and yet into the great somethingness of 
Life; "into the very womb of ether," say the 
old literateurs, there to conceive grand 
ideas which presently bear fruit: fruit not 
so much for self-support as for the support 
of the race. 

The contemplative soul is that which re- 
gards life from the standpoint of the purely 
spiritual, extending the roots of its thought 
in the direction of the upper world, the spir- 
itual world: God, if you prefer; drawing 
its sustenance from the Divine, transmuting 
into the human, feeding humanity upon that 
which it derives from Divinity. It is a very 
pretty picture and not at all hurtful and in- 

[ 152 ] 



LITE 

jurious. Rather is it explanatory of a great 
deal that we now dream about. We are not 
so much to be fed upon the things of earth 
as we are upon that bread which cometh 
down from Heaven. Jesus said to his 
disciples : "I have meat to eat that ye know 
not of." His life was sustained more 
by Divine contemplation than by physical 
exercise or material food. If we would live 
the same life and live well and long and 
helpfully to humanity, we must be fed from 
the very same source. Our tree of life must 
have its roots planted in the Divine. We 
must draw our refreshment from the great 
Water of Life, which is God, our sustenance 
from the meat of the Spirit. 

Then, and then only, shall we know what 
life really is. We shall become translated, 
changed from a belief in a necessity of de- 
pending upon matter to the consciousness 
that Spirit is the only thing that sustains 
and supports. The translation will begin in 
a small way; it will go on and on and on, 
until we, too, may taste of the glorious hope 
and the glorious achievement of Enoch. 

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LIFE 

This seems impossible because so few have 
done it in the world's history, but a wise 
man once said : "Whatever the human mind 
can conceive, the human mind can accom- 
plish." When Jules Verne conceived the 
idea of submarines, only adventurous youths 
took any interest in it; when the idea of 
navigating the air was conceived, wise men 
shook their heads. The theologians said it 
was exercising a prerogative which did not 
belong to man, invading the territory which 
belonged alone to God, and must eventually 
fail. It was seeking to dominate an atmos- 
phere for which man was not originally in- 
tended, which belonged to the birds. And 
what do we see ? We see the dream of Jules 
Verne actualised — demonstrated in a bar- 
barous manner, perhaps, but demonstrated. 
We see the air dominated, controlled, uti- 
lised, in a way that we would not prefer, but 
nevertheless actualised. 

Whatever the human mind can conceive, 
that it can accomplish; this has as much ref- 
erence to translation and the overcoming of 
what we call physical death and to the dem- 

[ 154 ] 



LIFE 

onstration and the bringing to light of im- 
mortality in the flesh as it has to aviation or 
submarine warfare. One is just as possible 
as the other, the only reason for its not be- 
ing more fully demonstrated is, as Balzac 
once said : "It has hitherto lacked its man of 
genius to demonstrate it." Balzac seems to 
have forgotten Jesus and Enoch and Elijah. 
Levitation is as much a possibility as avia- 
tion. The only reason why it is not more 
generally accomplished is because it is not 
more generally studied. Translation is a 
possibility. To the vulgar mind, of course, 
it is not. Why should it be ? Has any great 
accomplishment ever been possible to the 
vulgar mind? But to the awakened con- 
sciousness, it is a demonstrable possibility. 

We are living in an age when we are be- 
ginning to say, even in the world of physical 
science, "I do not believe anything is impos- 
sible." Why? Because we have seen so 
many things demonstrated before our very 
eyes. He is, indeed, an incredulous man 
who would suggest that anything is impos- 
sible. 

[155] 



LIFE 

So many marvellous things have tran- 
spired in the last twenty-five years, that we 
are ready for anything on a purely physical 
plane. We dominate all earth, water, sky, 
sea. All things are possible to the man who 
believes they are possible. Enoch believed 
translation was possible; he believed that he 
would not see death if he became more in- 
telligently acquainted with life. He demon- 
strated it. I am quite prepared to believe it, 
because I have seen this same law in part 
demonstrated. I have seen impending death 
frustrated. I have seen life lengthened by 
the dissipation of fear. 

Therefore, if you can totally overcome 
fear, you can overcome death, because death 
is produced by fear. Physicians agree with 
us in this. Jesus knew that it was the pre- 
disposing cause. He knew that if he could 
destroy the fear of death he could destroy 
death itself; we know to-day in Divine Sci- 
ence, if we can destroy the fear of disease, of 
poverty, and of pain, we can destroy this 
trinity of evils. We know it because we 
know that fear is the mother seed. We 

[156] 



LIFE 

know that fear is the procuring cause of 
these mental and physical maladies. Destroy 
it and they disappear. 

What is the antidote for fear? A knowl- 
edge of the truth. Jesus said: "Ye shall 
know the truth, and the truth shall make you 
free." If you know the truth about any- 
thing you are free from the tendency to err. 
If you know the truth about life, you are 
free from the tendency to be afraid of death ; 
if you are not afraid of death, you will 
neither invite nor attract it. Fear does both. 
Fear is the magnet which attracts poverty, 
pain, disease, death. To overcome fear, we 
must know the truth, and we must know the 
truth about life. 

What is life? Is it material or spiritual? 
Has it beginning and ending, or is it im- 
mortal? Is it that which we cannot see, or 
that which we do see? What is life, after 
all ? Life is the unseen verity of every man's 
being. It is the invisible Reality and Sub- 
stance, from which he can never become sep- 
arated, even though he put off his mortal 
body. Live he must; there is no such thing 

[157] 



LIFE 

as death. Somewhere, somehow, he must 
live, because he is a part of Life itself. 
When this becomes more intelligently un- 
derstood, we shall lose our fear, and the con- 
sequence will be a fuller life, the life more 
abundant, the life more pleasurable, the life 
more enjoyable. 

The fact that it is a spiritual life and does 
not tend to cause thought to gravitate in 
the direction of matter, or materiality, or 
sensuality, does not change the fact of its 
enjoyableness. He who lives most is he who 
lives best ; he who gets most out of life is he 
who understands what life is, and under- 
standing what life is, knows it to be purely 
spiritual. He walks, he talks with the 
Spirit, and God takes him: that is, Life ab- 
sorbs him, Life enfolds him, Life encom- 
passes him, Life breathes through him. He 
is an instrument through which Life mani- 
fests itself. The fear of death never comes 
to him who knows what Life is; he knows 
that all experiences are so many links in the 
great indestructible, unbreakable chain. To 
live is a delight to the man who knows what 

[ 158 ] 



LIFE 

life is: not going to be but is this very 
moment. Threats, intimidations, have no 
weight. He feels the consciousness of a 
Divine Presence, he knows that his life is 
indestructible and eternal now; this gives 
him courage to live it beautifully, cheer- 
fully, happily. Nothing can hinder such a 
man from entering into the larger, fuller 
appreciation of his own divine possibilities. 

Then let us study life from the purely 
spiritual point of view. Let us realise that 
it is that which is unseen, that which we 
carry about with us, that from which we can 
never become separated: "Neither height 
nor depth, nor length, nor breadth, nor 
things present nor things to come, can sep- 
arate us from the love which is in Christ 
Jesus," the life which is spiritual. 

This was the dictum of Paul, the Apostle, 
who said: "We shall not all sleep" — that 
is, we shall not all die, but in the twinkling 
of an eye we shall awake; we shall put on 
immortalitv now ; we shall become translated. 

This is what you are doing in your bodies. 
You are putting off mortality and putting 

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LITE 

on immortality while you breathe. You are 
casting off old cells and growing new ones, 
by a perfectly unconscious process to your- 
selves. Why not surcharge every new cell 
with the thought of eternal life, with the 
thought of indestructible immortality? Why 
not think of life as a purely spiritual thing 
so that each cell, as it takes the place of the 
old cell, shall come to perform its function 
harmoniously and perfectly, strong and vig- 
orous, until it gives place to a newer and 
higher and better cell? 

This is immortality: the replenishing of 
the human body by the transformation of the 
human thought ; the renewing of mind at the 
fount of thought; having the roots of 
thought in the direction of the Spirit; bear- 
ing the fruits of that contemplated life in 
health and strength and joy and power, 
abundant here and now. 

Purely spiritual, never material; purely 
immortal, never mortal; purely infinite and 
inexhaustible, never finite and exhaustible; 
increasing your energy, your vitality, your 
power: this is Life! 

[160] 



GOD THE BANKER 



"The Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure, the 
heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to 
bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto 
many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. 

"Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defence, and thou shalt 
have plenty of silver. 

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 

"The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that 
seek the Lord shall not want any good thing. 

"Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in 
the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. 

"Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good; and our 
land shall yield her increase. 

"Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of 
every living thing. 

"Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and 
righteousness. 

"That I may cause those that love me to inherit sub- 
stance; and I will fill their treasures. 

"There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: 
there is that maketh himself poor, yqt hath great riches. 

"Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he 
that gathereth by labour shall increase. 

"By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, and 
honour, and life." 



GOD THE BANKER 

"My God shall supply all your need according to his riches 
in glory by Christ Jesus." — Philippians 4:19. 

The close connection between righteousness 
and riches has received little emphasis from 
the time of Jesus down to the present day. 
All too frequently we have been treated to 
sermons adopting the belief that righteous- 
ness and riches are rarely found together. 
The poor man takes some consolation from 
the belief that piety and poverty are often 
found in very close company; so common 
has this experience become, that we have 
come to associate poverty with piety. There 
are those in the world who believe that it is 
impossible for a man who is righteous to be- 
come rich. They tell us a righteous man sel- 
dom acquires anything. And yet we have 
abundant testimony from both the Old and 
the New Testaments to prove that the asso- 

[3] 



GOD THE BANKER 



ciation between righteousness and riches is 
so close that where we find a lack of riches, 
or a lack of prosperity, or a lack of comfort, 
we should seek the cause. 

Only yesterday men believed that God 
was the cause of poverty. There are those 
champions of other men's poverties, who 
would have us believe that it is the sharp 
spur of necessity which drives men to do the 
great things in life; when they become suc- 
cessful and prosperous, incentive departs 
and art goes by the board. These men take 
a few isolated cases. They pick out some 
of the great artists in the world, and tell us 
what they accomplished in the days of their 
poverty, and how little they accomplished 
when they became prosperous. This may be 
true in certain individual cases, but art has 
been perpetuated largely by the men who 
have been successful, not by the men who 
have been failures. Art, music, literature, 
and science have all been perpetuated by 
men who have refused to be carried away on 
the waves of prosperity. For one artist you 
may cite who has given up his art and lost 

[4] 



GOD THE BANKER 



his incentive because he has become suddenly- 
successful and prosperous, you can cite an 
Edison, a Ruskin and a host of others, who, 
notwithstanding the fact that they have suc- 
ceeded in life and become prosperous, or are 
prosperous, have continued their arts and 
sciences with the same indefatigable zeal 
they would have given had they been the 
poorest men in the world. It is not always 
prosperity that destroys incentive. Poverty 
has destroyed a great deal more. The lash 
of poverty has destroyed courage and hope 
and ambition and desire; if we could count 
the cases where budding genius has been 
nipped by the effects of prosperity or the 
frost of poverty, the latter would so far ex- 
ceed the few exceptional instances of pros- 
perous men who have given up their arts or 
sciences because of their prosperity, that 
there would be no comparison. It is ridic- 
ulous to assert that prosperity, as such, has 
an injurious effect upon art, or literature, 
or music. 

I know of no more blighting thing in the 
world than poverty, notwithstanding our 

[5] 



GOD THE BANKER 



early teaching that it is a virtue, and, al- 
though some have assumed it as such, never- 
theless there is a phase, and a side of it, that 
is not tolerable. 

That is not poverty which permits a man 
to leave the world and seek a cloister or a 
monastery where his wants, such as they are, 
are anticipated ; where the cares and respon- 
sibilities of commercial life never touch him! 
That is prosperity of a kind. Wherever a 
man's wants and needs are anticipated and 
he knows that to-morrow morning he is sure 
to get his breakfast, provided he is living, 
and that to-morrow night he is sure to have 
his bed, provided he still lives, there is no 
poverty. There is poverty where a man is 
clashing with the hard things of the world 
and, regardless of his efforts to make good 
honestly and legitimately, is nevertheless not 
always sure that he is not going to suffer 
want and lack. So it is in Divine Science: 
we are striving to rise above poverty, even 
as we are striving to rise above pain. 

I know there are those who feel that re- 
ligion should never be used for purely mer- 

[6] 



GOD THE BANKER 



cenary purposes. But that which actuates 
an individual to rise above want or disease 
is not a mercenary purpose. It is his di- 
vine right. If you follow closely the read- 
ing from the Old and New Testaments, you 
will see that there are innumerable prom- 
ises of wealth and abundance and riches, to 
the righteous man, to the godly man. "No 
good thing will he withhold from them that 
walk uprightly," says the Old Testament. 

What is the matter with us that the sug- 
gestion and the claim and belief in lack 
so frequently knock at our doors? It is 
largely a question of belief with most of us. 
Many of us were born into poverty. Many 
of us were raised on the saving habit. The 
word economy has been dinned into our ears 
from our earliest childhood. No matter how 
much money you acquire, economy is a sure 
harbinger of a certain kind of poverty, be- 
cause it breeds a spirit of limitation. It 
breeds the thought of contraction. 

"There is that maketh himself rich, yet 
hath nothing." There is that one who ac- 
quireth great wealth so far as money is con- 

[7] 



GOD THE BANKER 



cerned, and yet is poor in spirit. Such an 
one has not time to enjoy it, does not know 
how to spend it. "There is that maketh 
himself poor, yet hath great riches." We 
have been prone to spiritualise this text. If 
a man were to become absolutely poverty 
stricken, and yet were rich in the grace of 
God, he maketh himself poor because he 
keeps his cash in circulation, and yet he hath 
great riches of enjoyment, of pleasure: I 
do not mean reckless abundance. The man 
who knows how to keep his cash in circula- 
tion rationally, is going to get more out of 
it, is going to get more out of life than the 
man who endeavours only to hoard and to 
save and to accumulate. We must needs 
learn the sacred art of distribution. But we 
can never learn it until we realise that as 
children of God we are exempt from pov- 
erty, even as we are exempt from pain. 

This is one of the lessons we are learning. 
We are learning that we have a right to be 
free from this distressing disease — that we 
have a right to be free from poverty, because 
it is a disease. It is the mother of those 

[8] 



GOD THE BANKER 



hellish twins, sin and sickness. How often 
men have been tempted to barter their 
honour, and women tempted to barter their 
virtue to escape it? Instinctively we rebel 
against poverty. And when we read the 
Bible carefully we find that poverty is the 
immediate consequence of wrong thinking, 
unrighteousness. We find that it is not a 
divine visitation, and we also find that there 
is a way out of it. Divine Science is lead- 
ing us into this great way. 

When Jesus said, "Ye shall know the 
truth and the truth shall make you free," I 
think he also included poverty as one of the 
things from which freedom was needed, be- 
cause he must have known the dire conse- 
quences of poverty. He was just as keen 
a sociologist as our sociologists of to-day; 
the more they penetrate beneath the surface 
of social conditions, the more convinced they 
become that drunkenness and harlotry and 
theft and greed are all more or less trifles 
to this, the great mother of all evils. 

There was a day when we declared that 
poverty was the direct consequence of drunk- 

[9] 



GOD THE BANKER 



enness. Jane Addams declares the very op- 
posite is the truth — and surely no one can 
speak with more authority than Jane 
Addams; she declares that drunkenness is 
all too frequently the effect of poverty. 
Those of you who have ever tested its 
bitter grip know what temptation it has 
brought with it. How easy it is for a man, 
at least for a short time, to lose the sense 
of lack through imbibing liquor ! How easy 
it is for a woman to lose for a time the 
sense of lack, through the taking of mor- 
phine! 

Oh, if we could look into the souls of 
men, of the people who are victims of these 
habits, I am sure we would find that pov- 
erty has driven the majority of them to this 
degradation. No man to-day turns to whis- 
key or morphine from sheer love or inclina- 
tion. The taste is cultivated as time goes 
on, for in most cases anxiety or great sor- 
row has driven them to it ; all too frequently, 
Jane Addams tells us, it is poverty. 

It is one of the greatest enemies of man. 
We are told expressly that we must fight 

[10] 



GOD THE BANKER 



these enemies, the enemies of true peace, of 
true purity, of true perfection, of true love 
and all happiness. We are told one of the 
great causes of poverty is ignorance. We 
are told that, wherever communities are 
lifted out of their ignorance through enlight- 
enment, through educational advantages, 
their poverty begins to decrease. Sociolo- 
gists, who have watched the upward trend 
through these advantages, give us this as 
their firm conviction. 

Those of you who employ men, place a 
premium upon enlightenment. Ignorance 
commands a very low wage. I know that to- 
day you can get a great deal of muscle for 
very little money. But when you come to 
buy mind, it is a different question. Men 
of mind place their own value upon their 
own minds. Men of muscle have other 
men's valuation placed upon their muscle, 
and so, after all, there is the question of 
mind versus muscles. It is a question of in- 
tellect. It is a question of soul. It is a 
question of the spiritual nature of man, and 
the cultivation of all these qualities of soul, 

[ii] 



GOD THE BANKER 



mind and spirit are the necessary means by 
which the individual and the community are 
to rise above its condign misery and per- 
sistent poverty. Other escape there is none. 
Therefore I can readily understand why 
Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and 
the truth shall make you free." 

He included poverty in this freedom, for 
until we are free from poverty there is very 
little chance for us to live. There is no free- 
dom. A life harassed with the cares of this 
world and distressed by the limitations of 
the unknown is impossible. Naturally we 
become irritable, impatient, hard to live with. 
Who can blame us? 

When a man — or a woman — is struggling 
to take care of those dependent upon the 
effort, whether children, or parents, or broth- 
ers or sisters, or himself, he knows how ex- 
tremely difficult poverty is. There is no 
quality in it to sweeten the nature, to give 
the individual time to think about the great 
things of God. I defy any man, whose time 
is so filled with work that his mind is ab- 
sorbed with it and the thought of limitation 

[12] 



GOD THE BANKER 



and lack, who has no time to dwell upon the 
Spirit, to be as spiritual as he would be if 
his mind were taken away from these dis- 
tressing conditions! 

There are many men in the world who 
would gladly become monks, if by taking 
orders and going into an institution, they 
could be freed from these responsibilities. 
But we never overcome an error by running 
away from it. An error that is not fairly 
met and conquered by the truth, will live 
to torment us later. So it is that we are 
combating lack and limitation in our per- 
sonal lives and in our business, — and that 
by divine authority. 

We are taking refuge in the Bible, in the 
teachings of Jesus. I know it is generally 
said that Jesus recommended poverty, and 
when the rich young man came to him and 
asked what he should do in order to enter 
into eternal life, Jesus said, "Go and sell 
that thou hast, and give to the poor, and 
thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and come 
follow me." It would seem indeed as if 
Jesus were recommending poverty. But 

[13] 



GOD THE BANKER 



that was only poverty for one man, because, 
if he sold all he possessed and gave to the 
poor, then the poor would not be poor. They 
would become comfortable and compara- 
tively prosperous. He did not give the same 
advice to Nicodemus. He did not give the 
same advice to the wife of the Roman offi- 
cer, who was fabulously wealthy, and who, 
tradition tells us, provided him with his 
wonderful seamless robes. We hear noth- 
ing of his giving this advice to other people, 
but just to this young man. And yet we 
take this isolated instance from the New 
Testament to recommend poverty as a ne- 
cessity on the part of those who would fol- 
low the Christ. Let us examine the case 
and see. 

This young man came to Jesus with great 
profession. He wanted to live the life, and 
asked, "What good thing shall I do that I 
may have eternal life?" The rich young 
man only wanted another treasure. He 
wanted in addition to all his wealth, peace 
of mind and the spiritual life. They can 
only come through a certain amount of self- 

[14] 



GOD THE BANKER 



sacrifice. He wanted everything, as was 
evidenced by the fact that when Jesus said 
to him, "Observe the commandments, Hon- 
our thy father and mother, Bear not false 
witness, Love God and love your fellow 
men," the young man protested his great 
morality. He said, "All these have I ob- 
served from my youth." He was extremely 
moral. Then Jesus said, "One thing thou 
lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou 
hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt 
have treasure in heaven: and come, take up 
the cross, and follow me." 

Jesus knew that he loved money for the 
sake of it and not for the good he could do 
with it. Jesus was clairvoyant and he read 
the minds of men. He saw that this young 
man was an accumulator, an acquirer, gath- 
ering together and heaping up wealth with 
only one object in the world: to have it. 
And Jesus knew that nothing could be done 
for the man until he wrenched him away 
from his love of money as such. 

There is no sin in having a great deal of 
money if we use it wisely; there is sin in 

[15] 



GOD THE BANKER 



not having any at all. If we have been as- 
sociating virtue with poverty and poverty 
with vice, we must stop it, because it has no 
Scriptural reason. On the contrary every 
text I have quoted is an indication of the 
fact that righteousness and riches go hand 
in hand. If we are not comfortable and 
prosperous, then in some mysterious way we 
are not righteous. 

Righteousness means right thinking. If 
we are not righteous it does not mean that 
we are not moral. Many a moral man is 
not a righteous man, but every righteous 
man is a moral man. Hence it is that we 
see so-called very pious men who are very 
poor. True; but there are riches that come 
through right thinking. There are many 
who do not realise that "all the Father hath 
is theirs." They do not realise that it is 
"the Father's good pleasure to give them the 
kingdom" ; not realising it, they try to beat 
the desire down with semi-starvation, or 
starvation altogether, on the principle that 
goodness and gold are never found in the 
same company. Everywhere you hear it, 

[16] 



GOD THE BANKER 



until it has become common belief that a rich 
man must be a dishonest man, — dishonest 
somewhere, somehow, — or he would not be 
rich. People tell you that a man cannot 
acquire a certain sum of money without 
being dishonest, without doing dishonest 
things. That may be true in some cases, 
but not in all. 

The thing we must learn through the study 
of Christianity in its scientific sense, is that 
poverty is no more the creation of God than 
is disease, and that God does not wish his 
children to be poor any more than he wishes 
them to be sinful or sickly, and that it is 
man's divine right to be comfortable, to be 
well fed, to be well clothed, to be free. And 
when he knows the truth concerning his di- 
vine heritage, he will be free. And when 
worry and anxiety give place to trust and 
confidence in the Almighty, when man re- 
alises that God is indeed his Banker, even 
as he is his Life, then will man come to the 
mount of tranquillity of thought and clear- 
ness of mind and perspicacity, and these are 
the essential necessities of all successful en- 

[17] 



GOD THE BANKER 



terprise. But no man can succeed whose 
mind is hampered by fear and anxiety, for 
these limit his vision. He can not see his 
opportunities. The man who is afraid "shall 
not see when good cometh," says the Bible. 
The man who is not afraid "does not see 
evil even when it approacheth," says the 
Bible. He has no eye for it. He has no 
belief in it. He has no thought of lack, no 
belief in insufficiency and poverty, and con- 
sequently having no belief in it, or fear of 
it, it can never touch him. 

We must go out in the direction of that 
which we desire, and going on in the direc- 
tion of it, we shall find it coming to meet 
us. Again it is the story of the prodigal 
son and the father. As man turns in the 
direction of God the Banker, God the 
Banker is there to meet him and his every 
demand. 

How often have we demanded of God 
that he meet our daily requirements? Very 
rarely. How often have we turned to other 
sources, to other channels, to visible things, 
and often with the thought that if our sub- 

[18] 



GOD THE BANKER 



stance did not come through these, it would 
not come at all, for there was no other place 
for it to come from? How often men have 
said, "Every avenue and every channel is 
closed!" When men say that, they forget 
that the resources of the Holy Spirit are in- 
exhaustible, eternal, and infinite in number. 
When men limit the channels of their sup- 
ply, or the avenues for their advancement 
to their field of vision, or to a particular 
line of business, they forget that God has 
infinite resources wherewith to bless and en- 
rich them. And it is God who blesses and 
enriches us, — though some men think they 
acquire their fortunes through their own in- 
genuity. They deceive themselves. There 
is only one source through which true riches 
ever come, and this is the Great Source of 
all Substance, God. 

Riches come to the man who exercises his 
mind, his thought force, through concentra- 
tion on the plane of the subjective, dwelling 
particularly upon the thing desired, upon 
success, upon prosperity, and never allow- 
ing his mind to dwell upon lack or poverty. 

[19] 



GOD THE BANKER 



If it knocks at his door, he says to it, "Get 
thee behind me, Satan." 

How many of us do this when the sugges- 
tion of limitation or poverty knocks at the 
door, — how many of us say, "Get thee be- 
hind me" ? Not many ! We cry out and be- 
come at once trembly and shaky. Do things 
look as if they were going to turn the wrong 
way? Immediately the man's heart faints 
within him. How many take refuge in the 
thought: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall 
not want," the Lord is my Banker? How 
many take refuge in the Truth? How many 
are able in trouble to take refuge in the Di- 
vine Truth, remaining cheerful and realis- 
ing that God is indeed their Banker, and 
that "No good thing will he withhold from 
them that walk uprightly"? 

At first, perhaps, this sounds somewhat 
foolish because we have not been taught in 
the past to rely upon the Infinite. We have 
been taught that when our material streams 
are dry, it is useless to look elsewhere ; if we 
have taken refuge in prayer, it has nearly 
always been a form of petition, a begging 

[20] 



GOD THE BANKER 



of God that he might in his wonderful mercy- 
lift us up out of our trouble. 

How rarely have we said: "Thou art my 
Banker and Thou knowest my needs. Thy 
substance is greater than all my needs. 
Thine abundance is greater than every de- 
mand I can make upon it. Thy resources 
are unlimited. Thy ways are innumerable 
and infinite. There is none like Thee! If 
a few channels are closed on that side, there 
are others over here, and back of me and in 
front of me, that are open. I shall claim 
my divine right. I shall claim substance 
as my own." 

Some may say that this new religion is 
deifying prosperity. Well, let us admit it 
is a new religion that is deifying prosperity. 
Is that not just a trifle better than the old 
religion in which men deified poverty? 

But we are not deifying prosperity. We 
are claiming it as the divine right of every 
child of God. And once this fact filters it- 
self into the mind of man he becomes strong 
in the degree he understands its meaning. 
Any thoughts that make for failure grad- 

[21] 



GOD THE BANKER 



ually lose their hold upon him, — anger, fear, 
ignorance, — these give place to spiritual en- 
lightenment. Knowing the truth, we be- 
come free, free from anything that makes 
for poverty. Slowly but surely we rise 
above the miasma of this blighting influence 
upon human life. 

Perhaps we have thought that society has 
conspired against us. Perhaps some of us 
have felt that it was a wise act on the part 
of God that we did not have prosperity and 
riches, because if we had had them we might 
have become renegade. Well, that may be 
so, but many become renegade without riches 
as the incentive. More men have become 
renegades without riches than with it. That 
a few rich men have become vicious is true. 
But we must not be limited in our investi- 
gation of things. Look where you will and 
what do you find? You find this wretched 
thing, — poverty! Truly there can be no 
more room for it in heaven than for disease. 
I can no more conceive of a poor man hav- 
ing a comfortable place in the kingdom of 
God than I can conceive it of a sick man or 

[22] 



GOD THE BANKER 



a sinful man; because, if a man were strug- 
gling with poverty or disease, and were in 
the kingdom of heaven, it would not be the 
kingdom of heaven to him. There is no 
room for poverty in the kingdom of God 
any more than there is for disease. 

Poverty is a shadow, that is pretending 
to be something, a passing ghost, that has 
derived most of its power from our belief 
in it. Who is there who has not felt its 
blighting influence? Whether or not he has 
actually felt it himself, he has had those close 
to him who have felt it. Who is there who 
has not felt that old age will bring with it 
the pangs of poverty? This is a blighting 
thought. It is poverty that we must array 
ourselves against, because it is so provoca- 
tive of discord, disease and dissension. Who 
has not lived in a family and felt the weight 
of its limitations ? 

In the past we rather argued in favour of 
it, and said that mastering it developed 
character; through the clash with poverty 
genius was born. It is true that men have 
struggled up through wretched poverty and 

[23] 



GOD THE BANKER 



made good; but all the presidents of the 
United States were not born in log cabins. 
Do not let us forget that. We emphasise 
one or two who have succeeded, forgetting 
that the greater number of the successful 
were neither born nor raised in squalid sur- 
roundings. We have just as good and suc- 
cessful men who have come up out of a beau- 
tiful harmonious prosperity. So again we 
say that poverty has nothing to recommend 
it except the things it may develop in some 
characters. A man may develop a beauti- 
ful character in a harmonious, refined at- 
mosphere, though there are those who may 
disagree with me. It is said that the mus- 
cles of the most feeble become strong in an 
atmosphere of prosperity. I am sure there 
are those who would like a chance to try and 
see if they could not grow strong in an at- 
mosphere where there was less strife and 
struggle. I know there are many things 
you could do, not only for yourselves and 
for those you love, but for the outsider, if 
you had more substance, and could do it le- 
gitimately and in a Christlike way. 

[24] 



GOD THE BANKER 



You frequently wish that you had more 
than you have, that you might be of more 
service in the world. What are those 
wishes, those desires, if they are not the in- 
stinctive longing for those things you could 
use for yourselves and others? When you 
become rich and prosperous through Truth, 
you will not have any more than God in- 
tended you to have. "Behold, all that I 
have is thine;" and Jesus was not talking 
foolishness when he said, "It is your Fa- 
ther's good pleasure to give you the king- 
dom." "It is the father's good pleasure" 
that we may have life and health and 
strength and happiness and opulence. 

The new religion says: "Claim it. Not 
arrogantly, but as your divine right as the 
child of God. It is your right to be as free 
from poverty as from anything else that is 
distressing. Go out into the world, realis- 
ing that it is your right to live, and to live 
well and comfortably. This does not mean 
to live foolishly. It means to live as God 
intended you should. It is your right; 
claim it." 

[25] 



GOD THE BANKER 



This is a new thought to some of us. 
When we are told that we have a right to 
claim prosperity, it seems too good to be 
true, because race belief has told us that all 
men cannot be prosperous, that there must 
always be a few who are rich and an extraor- 
dinarily great number who are poor. 

This race belief is the thought we must 
overcome, this race belief in, and this race 
fear of, poverty. Cultivate the mind, de- 
velop the intellect, sharpen the wits, and all 
with one thought, — that of overcoming this 
universal enemy. And when it is overcome, 
you will find many of the diseases that the 
human body seems to be heir to will disap- 
pear with it. I wish that I might enumer- 
ate some of the diseases that I know are di- 
rectly traceable to poverty: not only insom- 
nia, the inability to sleep nights; or dyspep- 
sia, the inability to digest your food; but 
some of the worst diseases — diseases that are 
malignant, that are contagious to the touch, 
and the diseases that result from weakened 
condition — are directly traceable to it. To 
what? To worry. Over what? Poverty. 

[26] 



GOD THE BANKER 



Then if you go back you will find that the 
mother of most of the diseases is this very 
thing* we are combating, and combating re- 
ligiously, not because we wish to have great 
prosperity and riches in order to live like 
fools! but in order to live like angels, bless- 
ing and benefiting others who do not realise 
the truth as we do, lifting them up gradu- 
ally to a comprehension of their own divin- 
ity. 

It is not the desire of students in Divine 
Science to be prosperous in order to accu- 
mulate riches. Sit down and quietly con- 
sider how much more you could accomplish 
with more money, how vastly much more 
money you could expend in doing good. 

It is not ignoble, it is not unchristian, it 
is not irreligious to demonstrate money, as 
some people in our Thought style it, — if 
we are going to do it in this way; — if we 
are going to build up a movement, if we are 
going to labour to start an educational so- 
ciety whereby humanity will be blessed and 
benefited, if we are going into the homes of 
the poor and for a time dispense our money 

[27] 



GOD THE BANKER 



in so-called charity, so as to lift them above 
poverty and the necessity for charity. 

Every one who reads this would be hap- 
pier if he had more means with which to do 
good. The resurrection of Jesus means 
vastly more than we shall find in many of the 
interpretations which have been placed upon 
it. The Christian who has not been resur- 
rected above lack is still in the abysmal 
depths where there is no peace, no power, 
no freedom, no liberty. Let him be resur- 
rected never so high above his passions, if 
he has not been resurrected above his pov- 
erties he is still unhappy because the thought 
of limitation oppresses him. 

We are not making prosperity a god ; we 
are making it a divine necessity. And when 
you think it over you will see it is your di- 
vine right; it is the divine right of every 
man, woman, and child in the world, not only 
to breathe all the air and take all the rest, 
comfort and relaxation he needs, but also 
to have all the clothes and the food he re- 
quires. We give him all the air he wants, 
because we cannot hide it from him; but we 

[28] 



GOD THE BANKER 



do not give him the right to the other things, 
and we do not take the right ourselves to 
trade in all the other things. 

Demonstrating prosperity is not a sin. 
We should say every day, "The Lord is my 
Shepherd, I shall not want." And you can 
substitute the word Banker for Shepherd. 
"The Lord is my Banker, I shall not want." 
Are you distressed in your business lives? 
Hold this thought. Are you suffering 
from the suggestion of limitation? Has 
some one defrauded you? Take this sug- 
gestion: The Lord is my Banker, I shall 
not want. Hold to it. And in ways you 
cannot think of to-day, through channels 
you never dreamed of, it shall come to you 
because it is the law: you shall have all you 
need. 

Let no thought of lack or limitation 
knock at the door of your mind and find ad- 
mittance. Put a sentinel at the door, and 
challenge every thought that comes. If it is 
the thought of lack, reject it instantly be- 
cause it is not of God. Reject the thought 
of poverty just as quickly as you would the 

[29] 



GOD THE BANKER 



thought of theft. There should be no more 
room in your mind for one than the other. 
A man who refuses to admit a thought of 
theft to enter his consciousness, will take a 
thought of poverty into his mind and not 
raise a doubt about it. He does not realise 
that he is unrighteous because he is admit- 
ting an unrighteous thought. He has ad- 
mitted the idea of poverty into his conscious- 
ness, and later on he marvels that he finds 
it manifesting in his bodily affairs. It would 
be a miracle if it did not. 

Men become prosperous because of their 
prosperous thoughts even when they are not 
righteous. A man remains poor even when 
he is pious because his is the poverty thought. 
Challenge the thought of poverty every time 
it comes to your door. You do not have to 
admit it into your mental household any 
more than you have to admit a tramp of 
the road into your material household. You 
will find that it will cause you as much 
trouble, and more, than the tramp, because 
the poverty thought clings like a burr. 
Avoid it with all the strength of your char- 

[30] 



GOD THE BANKER 



acter and purity of your soul because it does 
not proceed or emanate from God, who is 
the Giver of all good, the Source of all 
blessings, the infinite inexhaustible Source 
of all supply, in whom there is no lack; "in 
whom all fulness lies," says the Bible. 
There is no limitation or lack in the inex- 
haustible Source of all Good. If you can- 
not find it in God, you cannot find it any- 
where. 

If any suggestion of lack comes to you, be 
instant in prayer. Do not allow the thought 
of poverty to put its foot over the thresh- 
old. Meet it with this positive affirmation: 
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not 
want;" — the Lord is my Banker, I lack noth- 
ing. I am living in the inexhaustible 
abundance of the Holy Spirit, I am not 
afraid. Depend upon it, if you do this, you 
will find yourselves benefited mentally, 
physically, financially; it will be the begin- 
ning of an excellent habit, a habit which will 
make for the building up of legitimate, hon- 
ourable prosperity and the usefulness which 

[31] 



GOD THE BANKER 



grows out of legitimate, honourable pros- 
perity. 

Let this thought remain with you: — The 
Lord is my Banker, I shall not want. 

A righteous man thinketh that which is 
righteous, and whilst he does so, and walk- 
eth uprightly, he shall have the Lord in 
heaven favourable unto him in all his ways. 

"My God is able to make all grace abound 
unto you, that ye, always having all suffi- 
ciency in all things, may abound to every 
good work. 

"My God shall supply all your need ac- 
cording to his riches in glory by Christ 
Jesus." 



[32] 



IliHH RY ° F C0NGRESS 

019 566 698 2 



